


Tapestry

by Arvensis5



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Frigga Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Loki Angst, Loki Needs a Hug, Loki-centric, M/M, Odin's A+ Parenting, Sorry Not Sorry, Suicidal Thoughts, Tissue Warning, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2542673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arvensis5/pseuds/Arvensis5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While in prison on Asgard, Frigga devises her own punishment for her wayward son – she bestows upon Loki the curse of watching the different pathways of what might have been during the attack on Midgard. In one thread, he accepted the drink from Stark. In another, Stark saved him from death. In every thread, the infuriating mortal captures Loki's attention. Now, every time he closes his eyes, Loki walks the threads of fate that never were and that never will be, and in doing so, he must learn from the past to find the future that Frigga has already foretold from the tapestry of fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Гобелен](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3419858) by [Ferzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferzy/pseuds/Ferzy)



> My artist is the wonderful [Tamflakes](http://tamflakes.tumblr.com)! You can find her gorgeous art [here](http://tamflakes.tumblr.com/post/101531840153/tapestry-by-arvensis5-while-in-prison-on-asgard) and [here](http://tamflakes.tumblr.com/post/101593729208/tapestry-part-2-aka-the-hug-that-loki-needed-a).  
> 
> 
>  

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…”_   
> _“It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake._

  
He wondered if these walls had always been so pristinely white. 

Had Odin’s father, or Odin’s father’s father before him, decided to hide those souls that marred a stain on Asgard by covering the darkest of its corners in pure white stone? Had they made the pristine blank canvas of its dungeon free of any discernible patterns so that even those imprisoned within its deepest bowels were forced to endure the brightness of the realm?

It was dull, really. Dull and dismal, and oh so terribly bright; bright enough to hurt his eyes when he woke, as though he’d fallen asleep under the suns of Muspelheim.

His mothe— _Frigga_ had visited, had been kind enough to have books delivered to his cell, but after the better part of a year Loki knew he’d succumb to the madness he saw around him eventually.

Within his first week, one of the other prisoners in the cell across from him had attacked and eaten one of his cellmates, whilst his fellow captives and captors alike had jeered him on.

And who wouldn’t? The bright red of the prisoner’s death was the only color Loki had seen so vividly in months, as it splashed in almost crimson waves, like paint splattered upon a perfectly prepared canvas. It was beautiful, in a way that something deadly is beautiful. One knows just to look, not touch. The red against the stark white walls was bright, brighter even than the color he saw behind his eyelids, bright and warm and welcoming, as he had imagined it would be.

The color red held so much promise.

If he were to be honest though, even for a moment, it wasn’t as if he craved the darkness anyway, not ever again. At least when he woke surrounded by the eternally bright walls, he knew where he was.

“Good afternoon, my Prince,” a guard taunted as he passed.

Loki exhaled a carefully measured breath and turned to pace again in front of the golden screen. So it was afternoon, but of what day or how many months, he didn’t know. He’d tried in the beginning to keep track of his sleeps, of when he closed his eyes and woke again, but he slept so poorly and so little that he couldn’t imagine how that could measure time any longer.

Who would have thought that of all things that the shining city of Asgard might share in common with the black tortures devised by The Other and Thanos, it would be the complete lack of a measure of time that had become the only constant in Loki’s long life? Endless days, days and days of daytime, days of bright white lights and never dark, never nightfall, never a view of stars, never changing.

At least when Frigga visited, Loki could ask after what day it was. Ask how long he’d been wrapped inside the gilded cage of Asgard, wearing slippers and reliant upon whatever scraps of generosity the Queen bestowed upon him.

The wall slid away in one corner and a battered tray scraped across the floor.  “Your meal, my prince,” the guard’s mocking voice echoed across the marble walls.

He let his hand pass carefully over the tray, his seidr reaching out and letting him feel the vibrations from the morsels. There, Loki scowled. He cradled his hand against his chest as though he’d burned his fingers. In the bread, something felt tainted, more rotten inside than Loki himself.

He removed the bread and carried the rest to a small table in the corner of his cell. It was meager for an Aesir, but sufficient enough for Loki. He’d never needed the same sustenance as Thor.

He let his lips curl into a bitter smile, his back towards the guards where no one could see the mad look that floated across his eyes. He was a _fool_ for not questioning it earlier; his supposed parents, the golden king and queen of Asgard, their eldest son, a pale blond behemoth, and he, the skinny dark-haired child, tormented for his magical talents. A _fool_ for believing he was kin.

After eating, he sat down on the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. A wave of exhaustion enveloped his thin frame, and for a moment Loki worried he’d missed another draught of poison in his food. The exhaustion lingered without turning his stomach this time, however. He looked at his pillow, a mere few feet from where he rested; the distance seemed immeasurable.

If he were to sleep another four thousand years, it wouldn’t be long enough to remove the memories of his time with The Other; memories he saw when he closed his eyes, even in the pure white walls of his cell. That is, until the new visions bled through, until Loki stood on the pathways between fates, staring at the vivid colors of the tapestry of his life, down avenues and choices that he never made.

She had said to him: “Please, don’t make this worse.”

She had punished Loki too, in a way that only a mother could. (Not that he would ever admit it, he grimaced, and she _wasn’t_ his mother. She just _wasn’t_.) When he closed his eyes, the invisible strands of fate pulled him down along their pathways, through the weavings and across time and space, and forced Loki to examine the threads and pulls between different strands, to see each to its end in rapid moments of exhilaration and fear and overwhelming sadness.

At first, he watched the very threads Frigga had woven and tried to move and direct, as she tried to push Loki in the right direction (for now that he could see the strands, he saw her handiwork everywhere), but never could she save him.

He fell from the Bifrost—and into the blackest depths of the universe, into the hands of the Mad Titan—in every thread.

That realization had made Loki physically ill. The guards thought that Loki had succumbed to whatever poison had been included that day, and had stood cackling at the force field, pointing and laughing as the Trickster retched into a bin before he managed to press the correct panel to reveal the toilet. His seidr hadn’t even protected him then; his shock was so great that he couldn’t summon the illusions to shield himself from their prying eyes, and Loki remembered the feeling of bile rising against his throat, his stomach churning with a painful burn.

That nothing could save him, _nothing_ could save him from that fate, made Loki’s very soul wish for an end, wish for nothing more than to lie down and surrender, forget that he had ever been created, return to nothing, ashes to ashes, and fade away.

She had said: “Please, don’t make this worse,” and Loki had smirked, and mouthed off, “Define worse.”

But he knew what would make it worse. He knew it. _Intimately_.

The Other would come for him, eventually. The Mad Titan’s lapdog wouldn’t let Loki’s failure to take Midgard go unpunished. And, eventually, Thanos would learn what Loki had done on Midgard, would discover his deception—but it was too late now.

There were so many moments, so many instances when he thought just once, just this once, someone might let him speak, might listen. And then, when he had been pulled before Odin, chains on his ankles and wrists, the old fool had taunted him. Told everyone that Loki was nothing more than a puppet, a toy that had outgrown its use for the kingdom of Asgard, a baby meant to die but for Odin’s generosity of spirit and desire for a prize. Had he not given the baby monster _mercy_ , he would not stand before the All-Father now.

Loki was many things, but he would not beg. Not again. Not _ever_ again. And if Odin, the man who had last proclaimed to love him as a _son_ couldn’t even deign to _ask_ him, to demand to know _why_ , then who was Loki to explain? What right did he, Odin All-Father, supposedly one of the most powerful gods in the Nine Realms, have to know about Thanos’ machinations, about what Loki had divulged to avoid pain, pain of the most absolute and terrible kind, of black nights and days and red and fire and fear, if he looked at Loki and saw nothing more than a demon in Aesir skin. For only a monster would make a deal with the devil, without reasons.

If Asgard burned when Thanos came looking for his revenge, so be it.

He closed his eyes.

The bright lights turned the landscape behind his eyelids red—Jötunn-red eyes, red like his own blood as it flowed like rivers under The Other’s ministrations—and he threw an arm over his face, nestling into the crook of his elbow. The room went blissfully dark behind his arm, and Loki concentrated on breathing in and out.

Oh! How he longed for the red, for what he had believed awaited him on Asgard when Thor took him home, the axe and the end of his torments. He still remembered the ache in his bones as the Tesseract took him and Thor, the way his body burned with the movement, straining against scars and injuries even his seidr couldn’t wipe away after all this time.

But the All-Father was never merciful. Loki exhaled, the air burning twin paths in his lungs. Let it never be said that the All-Father was kind.

The room was quiet around him, and he felt the weight of his thoughts sink into the bed, as though the white sheets and blanket swallowed him, pulled at him. It was so easy to surrender, just as it had been so easy to fall. To let go, to welcome the end that never came.

For this moment, this very moment only, Loki wished he could drift again along the threads of what might have been forever. Let his thoughts wander, let his mind open and embraced the curse Frigga had bestowed, examining and seeing and creating and inventing and—Oh!—wishing that things could have been different, that when he opened his eyes there would be an outstretched hand inviting him to join in with the living world and pulling him back from the brink of his own surrender to Mistress Death herself. But hope is a fickle beast, at times.

He dreamed of a mortal’s fine eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”_

“Make a move, Reindeer Games,” barked the mortal man in a fire-red metal suit, and Loki slowly raised his hands as his gold and green armor vanished.

“Good move,” the man said, and the red armor’s weapons disappeared within the construct. Moments later the man was joined by the super soldier, a pair of enhanced cuffs materializing from a compartment in the metal suit.

Loki remained silent as the two mortals bickered back and forth, before the soldier stepped forward with the cuffs. Barton had mentioned that the man out of time was stronger than most mortals, almost as strong as Loki. Behind him, the craft that had begun blasting that infernal sound had cleared a space large enough in the square to land, and the mortals had scattered like roaches in all directions, skittering here and there.  

“Nothing to say, Bambi?” the mortal in the metal suit taunted, and Loki threw a careless smirk in the mortal’s direction. Barton had mentioned he was called the Iron Man and was a billionaire philanthropist that acted as a consultant for SHIELD, whatever that meant, but Loki was more concerned with whether he would have the strength of character and assets to defend against—

A bright, sharp pain split from his forehead and he grimaced, before the burning sensation exploded outward and he fell to his knees. He could hear the soldier barking orders at him to rise but his view shifted and Loki’s heart raced; his vision became one of black and darkness and starlight shifting on the plain of another realm.

The Other stood before him, his sharp features and grotesque mouth twisted into a sneer, as he paced towards Loki.

“You are stalling. Plotting against my master.” The Other’s fingers trailed along Loki’s shoulders lightly in an intimate gesture.

Loki bit his cheek to avoid shuddering under the cold, unnatural touch. Bile rose in his throat. “I do no such thing,” he swallowed, willing his hands not to shake. “The humans that have found me are the only force on Midgard that could offer a defense against the Chitauri. We will destroy them now, _before_ the Chitauri arrive.”

“See that you succeed, godling.” The uncomfortable petting continued across Loki’s chest, down his abdomen, before the lizard-like fingers rested lightly on his waist, possessive. “Though, I do so miss your little _visits_ to my domain.”

And before Loki could retort, his stomach dropped and he returned to his own mind. He clenched his teeth, biting back a scream as a burst of sharp fire flittered across the connection, searing the edges of his consciousness and threatening to ignite, and then the god was shoved sharply from behind. Loki stumbled, his boots catching on the cobblestones, and he fell to his knees, then fell again, carried by his momentum. His forehead bounced once, twice off the stones of the plaza, and he heard the stones cracking, felt the grime and dirt embed in his skin.

“Huh. Whaddya know, gods actually bounce,” a metallic voice crackled behind him, and Loki growled as he strained to stand against the cuffs.

His head ached, a dull throbbing pain that spread from behind his eyes to his jaw, with The Other’s lasting gift searing a bright hole in the background. Don’t think of it, Loki grimaced. _Don’t think_.

But it was too late, and as Loki was pulled to his feet by the iron fist around his elbow, he remembered. Remembered begging The Other, thinking it would never end, thinking nothing could be worse than living in that moment. He inhaled sharply, only to realize he’d stood still too long and the mortal with the red suit stood again before him, a blaster raised mere inches from his face.

“Hey, Reindeer Games? You in there?” the mortal in the red armor mocked him. “Did your brain stutter or something?”

Loki looked up into the metallic faceplate with glowing blue eyes. The color was a fiercely blue, almost Tesseract blue, and it radiated outward in points on the mortal’s chest and hands. He wanted to run his fingers over the bright blue circles, to see if it carried weight, power behind it that could turn and channel and move things. _Protect the god from his tormentors_ , the thought flittered traitorously across his mind. But his cuffed arms stayed stubbornly still and his hands clenched into painful knots, nails digging into the delicate skin of his palms.

He looked away.

“Right, okay. Let’s go,” the man tugged on Loki’s cuffs. “Off to see the wizard.”

“I understood that reference!” chimed the soldier. 

* * *

As the quinjet maneuvered through take off, Loki watched the pair out of the corner of his eye. The one in the red metal armor was already suspicious of his intentions, leering at him. He was wary, cautious. Hadn’t Barton said that he was one of the most intelligent men on Midgard?

He’d have to kill him first, then.

Lightning flashed and the jet rocked in the sudden wind currents, and Loki looked up towards the sky through the jet’s windshield.

“What’s the matter?” the soldier taunted. “Scared of a little lightning?”

“I’m not overly fond of what follows,” Loki deadpanned.

Moments later the jet rocked sideways and a silhouette lit up the sky from above. Loki watched as the one in red armor opened the cargo door while his shield brother protested behind him, and Loki flinched, reaching for the buckles holding him in as Thor’s weight slammed into the ramp.

Thor struck the armored Midgardian with Mjölnir and, before the mortals could retaliate, before Loki could disillusion his presence and escape, Thor ripped Loki from his restraints, grabbed him around the throat, and flung the god out the hatch.

Down, down toward Midgard, far below. Loki fell, the black night sky surrounding him, suffocating him, and he laughed. He laughed and laughed, until Thor grabbed his arm and slowed their descent.

And Loki stared at the unfamiliar fingers digging into his arm, firm and unyielding and never listening, never _seeing_ , always putting Loki in his place, always more powerful than Loki, and the god saw red. He saw red, and green, and gold, and such vivid, painful memories of what the shadows had felt like, of what his life had truly been. And Loki felt the presence of The Other looming, looking at Thor and wondering, just for a moment, if having a second god under control would please their master, and that was enough.

Bile rose in his throat, and Loki kicked at Thor, shoving away from the Thunderer’s grasp. Ignoring Thor’s surprised shout, the lithe god tucked his legs in tightly against his chest, barreling faster and faster and faster towards the ground. He let his seidr increase his mass until gravity could do the rest, presseing his arms and legs tightly together and cutting through the wind like a poisoned dart.

The wind whipped his black hair in painful stripes against his forehead and cheeks, and Loki pressed his chin tightly against his chest. He heard somewhere in the distance Thor’s frantic shouts and the whir of Mjölnir as he tried to catch Loki, but the Trickster had the advantage of speed and surprise and magic. He thought he even heard the distant roar of repulsors, the powerful devices that made that mortal man fly, but all he could perceive was black and earth and the roar of the wind.

Shame, that.

He would have liked to see what made such a strange mortal man tick. What made him invent and create and breathe life into constructs like the one he wore.

And just as quickly as the strange thought had occurred to Loki, it slipped from his mind as the ground approached faster and faster, a dark smudge against the rest of the dark sky.

Failure was a blessing, a hopeful beast buried deep within his chest, and it was all he could do to keep his heart-rate steady, to continue to conceal his thoughts from The Other’s probing reach, lest he at the last possible moment wrestle control back from Loki and slow the god’s descent with Loki’s own seidr. He’d already betrayed himself over and over and over again, giving in to the demands of the Mad Titan, letting go of all that he had held sacred for one more moment without pain, one more day of life.

He was no one’s plaything, not a weapon or relic—he was nothing, a smear upon the universe that should not exist, and nothing he would become.

Loki pulled his favored dagger—an ornamental piece made by the dwarves that Odin had given him at his first blót feast day—positioning the tip carefully above his heart between two ribs, and braced his arms securely against the hilt as the black-blue hooks in his mind exploded in bright, hot fury, The Other’s sudden rage a violent purple across the horizon of Loki’s vision.

The impact was sudden, and Loki only had moments to wheeze in painful surprise as the knife-tip hit true, wedged deep between his ribs as the earth rose up to meet his body and cratered around him, as though Midgard sought to hold its reluctant king in a rocky embrace, and Loki sagged into the warmth before Thor was upon him, shouting his name.

Calling him _brother_.

And Loki closed his eyes for the last time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”_

“I didn’t much like that possibility,” Frigga said the next morning, when she asked what he’d seen the night before.

“Why not? It’s my favorite of those I’ve seen so far,” Loki replied, an easy grin sliding across his face at her look of disapproval.

“You know why, my son,” she admonished him. “Keep looking at the threads, you’ll see.”

“What I see is a new way to torment me,” he glowered. “Teased and taunted with all the things I can never have, that could _never_ have been mine. Did you know, when you raised me for Odin’s relics vault? That I would _always_ fall?”

“Loki, you are _not_ a relic,” she sighed. “And I know you’ll survive this fall, too.”

Like a sulking child, he turned his back on Frigga. It _hurt_ , ached like a broken limb, waking to discover that he had lived after all, that it was all just an empty dream, one of the thousand of possible strands of fate that Loki now explored in hindsight, examining with impunity events that had never happened and never would.

Frigga’s curse was the cruelest punishment of all. Loki closed his eyes, fingers digging into his scalp as he rolled over. She robbed him of _hope_ , robbed him of the belief that he had done what had to be done to save himself, now that he could see all the ways a _better_ man might have sacrificed himself instead to stop Thanos. It proved nothing but that Loki was the monster he had feared, the monster dressed in an Aesir’s skin.

No, the truth of what occurred was much more humiliating.

Instead of kicking out his legs and plunging to his death, Thor had caught him. Slowed his descent so that all Loki received on impact was a massive bruise against his spine and legs. That Loki would be so lucky to end it all, to be free from the vice-like forces of the soul gem wrapped tightly around his will with hooks into his very soul, when he hadn’t stood a chance. He remembered the blue-black hooks that contrasted painfully against the green of his seidr, that bled into his very magical signature and tainted the god’s own will, twisted it into directions Loki hadn’t thought to go, not before Thanos had provided him with a _purpose_. And make no mistake, fear is a purpose—a terrible purpose.

 _Glorious_ , indeed.

It didn’t matter, the god told himself. If only Odin had just swung the axe, ended the farce of Frigga’s affections once and for all.

Once, he’d said that aloud to her. He called her visits—her claim to love him, in spite of his actions, and even though he was a monster’s spawn—a farce perpetuated to thwart the All-Father’s execution. Frigga had laughed until her projected-self cried, then she disappeared just as suddenly, and Loki hadn’t seen her for several days.

He didn’t voice such sentiments again.

“Well? Aren’t you going to ask me?” she prodded him.

Loki looked up, startled.

Frigga stood nearby, her fair blue eyes inspecting Loki with a mixture of something resembling patience and frustration, as though she’d thought he would bow and dance and perform in some way.

Loki let his head fall back on the pillows, and rubbed his eyes. “Ask you what?” he finally replied, when it was clear Frigga would not leave.

“Ask how I know that you will survive this ordeal, too?”

Loki stifled down his grief, knowing she couldn’t tell him, knowing she was wrong regardless of what she thought she’d seen in the tapestry threads, and he rolled onto his side.

“I’m tired, Frigga,” he said. “Leave me be.”

* * *

He wasn’t sure if it was night, or if he slept again after she left, but as he closed his eyes he saw yet another yellow thread that the Fates had burned away, rejected from the tapestry. As he faded from wakefulness, he fell into the eyes of the Loki within the thread, as though from one moment to the next, he knew he was watching a strand unravel of what would never be, and then—

Oh, but praise the Norns for their mercy, the concussion splitting his skull open after Thor threw him from the quinjet was _glorious_.

Glorious and oh so useful, and Loki groaned as he rolled to his knees while Thor shouted at him; the Thunderer’s voice was deafening, painful to Loki’s ears. It was almost as though he could see the colors of Thor’s bellows, as though every time Thor yelled, a bright yellow and blue and purple wave danced across Loki’s vision.

Then the Man of Iron hurtled into Thor, and Loki almost laughed at the absurdity, at the terrible irony of his existence, that the one thing he wanted was almost in his grasp. It didn’t even matter what Odin would do anymore, he was nothing; he was no one. He’d banished Thor for less; Loki could handle banishment, if he would just remove The Other—

Loki froze. Slowly, Loki stood, and his hands shook as he realized that he’d thought a traitor’s thought, that he’d wished for something forbidden, painfully forbidden—and nothing happened. _Nothing happened_.

He choked on the first laugh, the feeling foreign and unusual as it crumpled within his chest, and rose again, wheezing and strangled-like, and Loki coughed as he crumpled sideways, the laughter mixing with tears and suddenly he was laughing and sobbing, so much that his ribs ached and he folded his arms over his sides to press down on the sore spots. His form shook inside the armor, skinny arms and legs bruising against the firm leather and metal after so long undone, after so many months of nothing but pain and horror and every touch a torment, his muscles weakened without—without—

And Loki’s laughter died, stifled into gasping sobs. “It’s over. It’s over,” he muttered. “Oh Norns, he’s gone. It’s over.”

“Uh, Cap?” the metallic man had returned with Thor. “Do Norse gods have psychological breakdowns?”

“Above my pay grade, Stark,” the other man responded. "Let Fury sort it out."

Then the spinning guns of the quinjet materialized in front of him, and Loki raised his cuffed arms in surrender, letting the tears course in twin paths down his cheeks.

He laughed, laughed as the soldier threatened him if he attempted any ‘funny business,’ as the strange man in red armor helped him to his feet, and at Thor’s strangled expression of confusion and anger and something more, something lost.

Loki couldn’t bring himself to care as he followed the mortals aboard and let the one the Soldier had named Stark—who hadn’t let go of his elbow, after he’d helped the god to his feet—buckle the straps around Loki’s chest, securing him again.

And Loki had paid them no attention after that, as Thor and Stark argued and shouted, as the soldier and Widow radioed ahead to SHIELD and the quinjet moved into the black. If Loki had broken free, if the Soul Gem’s control of Loki’s magic had truly dissipated, then the Tesseract couldn’t hold Barton and Selvig either, and nothing, nothing would matter any longer. He’d bought himself time, quite accidentally, time to run or time to beg for death or seek his own alternative. Time to recover away from The Other, without that sickly oily feeling in his mind, the blue-black hooks had left holes in his seidr that filled with green and spilled over, in painful waves pulsing against his very center.

Loki felt his hands clench so hard that the joints burned and his stomach gave a painful twist that had little to do with the jet’s movements. Thanos’ corner of the universe was far from here, so far, and without the Tesseract—and yet, the Mad Titan _would_ come for Midgard.

But Loki wouldn’t be here by then. He _wouldn’t_. The humans couldn’t keep him here, not when his seidr strengthened, could they? But what if—

“Are you even listening, Rock of Ages?”

Loki flinched, and turned to find Stark at his side again, gauntleted hand gently gripping the god’s elbow between armored fingers and urging Loki to stand. Thor stood behind Stark with his hammer tucked under one arm and that confused, stupid expression Loki loathed across the Thunderer’s face.

“No,” Loki said, before flashing the shorter human a watery grin.

The mortal rolled his eyes, but helped Loki stand. “Come on Bambi, time to get off this roller coaster.”

* * *

The helicarrier was not what Loki expected from Barton’s description. He’d thought the humans would show less trust of a god, rather than rely upon soldiers armed with weapons that they must have already known wouldn’t seriously harm him. And then, to escort Loki to his cell without covering his eyes, through the bowels of the great vessel? What a strange display of power, Loki thought as he was led inside past the vulnerable points, that if only the mortals knew his capabilities, knew that his seidr could destroy this vessel so easily, he never would have been invited inside, much less taken for a stroll.

But now that his thoughts were his own, he didn’t know what to make of it all. He had never cared for Midgard, of course, but he couldn’t hide away here, couldn’t disappear and hope that The Other and Thanos would not to find him. It was too small, too isolated from the rest of the realms. He would have to escape eventually, but where could he run now?

Asgard was out of the question.

Fury came to visit and jeered Loki about what he had hoped to accomplish, but the god ignored him, closed his eyes and napped right in the middle of the man’s diatribe. He ignored the rumblings and rants and just surrendered to the quiet within his own mind for the first time in so long.

Quiet and warm and comfortable. Safe, even.

His seidr had roared to life with a vengeance, and Loki could still feel the tingles underneath his skin as his magic reworked and healed long-held scars and injuries, remaking his bones and blood and skin again, and it was agonizingly exhausting. Someone must have told his captors that Aesir needed more sustenance than humans—or maybe his captors watched Thor eat for a few days, though the thought of the Thunderer shoveling food in his mouth like a common farm animal made Loki nauseated—because, not long after he arrived, his captors increased the amount of food they delivered to his cell; yet Loki could barely finish half of his rations, if even that much.

And then one morning a sleeping mat was shoved through the top opening of his circular glass cage, followed by pillows and blankets and a small brush with a silver-gray tube that smelled faintly of mint. Loki ignored the oddly positioned pile of furnishings, and remained where he always had, reclined against the far glass wall where he could see who came and went from the room with the glass box.

A woman with red hair arrived not long after the pillows, and Loki looked up to notice her waiting, watching him from outside the glass.

The barest hint of a smile slipped over his face as he nodded once to her in greeting, before he continued, “He’s safe now, Agent Romanova. I assume he’s already made contact?”

“You are different than I expected,” she said.

Loki huffed, then wheezed as though it hurt to laugh. He pressed a hand to his ribs. Below the surface, his seidr hummed against his hand. “I know,” he replied, and then refused to answer any further questions as he rolled to the side and tried to think, tried to imagine what he wanted to do now that he was free, finally, from the expectations and false hopes of Asgard, from the torments and lies and tortures of Thanos and The Other, from the Mad Titan’s false ambitions.

But who was he, now that he was no longer a prince of the golden realm of Asgard?

“Whoa,” a new voice rang out, and Loki rolled over on his side to find the man of the red armor standing outside the glass window, peering in at him.

Stark hadn’t donned it to visit, and Loki’s eyes were drawn to the shorter man’s dark hair and meticulously groomed goatee. He was reasonably well built; possibly even what Loki might once have considered his type. Darker than most Aesir in features, but then again, so was Loki. And every time the man opened his mouth, he created a conundrum that Loki couldn’t answer.

“You look like shit, buddy. Have you even slept?” Stark teased, but Loki saw something he almost would label concern in those rich brown eyes.

“Are you supposed to be in here, mortal?” he sighed.

“Probably not,” the man admitted, before he flashed a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m Tony Stark. Also known as Iron Man.”

“I know who you are,” Loki sniffed. Mortals all thought themselves so important.

“Yeah? Betcha didn’t know this. I’m also the one who’ll be first in line kicking your ass if this pathetic ‘depressed prisoner’ act is some ploy to escape, Reindeer Games,” Stark flashed a grin at Loki, his eyes twinkled with something akin to mischief.

Loki almost found himself wanting to smirk back. “Brave words, Ant,” he huffed instead.

“Why thank you, Bambi," Stark squinted, before drumming his fingers on the glass.  "Ah… quick question, weren’t your eyes blue earlier?”

“They’re green now?”

When Stark nodded, Loki barked a laugh, and the movement hurt in the depths of his core, as though bone grated against bone, and he struggled to keep his breaths even. He felt… woozy. Drunk, even. As though he’d drunk mead with Thor for weeks at a time, and was both intoxicated and hung over at the same moment in time.

“Yeah. About that…” Tony said.

“Whatever assumption you are about to voice, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share it.” Loki waved a hand to indicate the glass barriers, presuming Thor was listening somewhere nearby. If the Thunderer were to learn of Loki’s control at the hands of Thanos, he’d definitely insist on Loki accompanying him to Asgard and there would be no hope for Loki to escape from Odin, or from the Mad Titan later on.

“I see,” and the mortal sat beside the glass. “I think I understand.”

“Unlikely,” Loki rolled his eyes.

“I was held against my will by terrorists, who tortured me until I agreed to build weapons for them. I escaped, but just barely. There was a man held captive with me. He died. Saved my life.” Stark sat down beside the glass, and pulled something from his pocket.

Loki looked up to see the man fiddling with a device in his hands, something that appeared to be a handheld communications device. The device was mere inches from the mortal’s nose and he appeared very intent on figuring out how it worked, what made it tick, but Loki could see no discernible writing or buttons that would indicate its interface. Instead, the mortal tapped again on the top of the device, and began the sequence again.

“Maybe you do understand,” Loki conceded. “But it changes nothing.”

“Where would you go?” the mortal asked, not looking up from his device.

“Excuse me?” Loki pushed himself up to rest on his elbows, so he could watch the strange human more carefully.

“If I let you out. Where would you go? SHIELD thinks you killed all those people by choice, Thor wants to return you to Asgard, and now he has the magic blue space portal cube. Where would you go?”

“I don’t know,” Loki admitted.

“And if Thor gets his way, what happens on Asgard?”

Loki couldn’t hide a low chuckle that welled up in his chest. He was dirt upon the shoes of the Aesir, and even lower on Jötunheimr as a King-Killer. But Odin could offer him something, the one thing he’d sought for so long, the one thing that eluded him at every turn.

After a while, he answered: “Peace maybe. A chance to rest.”

“You mean death,” the man guessed.

“I can only hope for such a blessing from the All-Father,” Loki sneered.

“And the other dude, what would he do?” Stark rapped his knuckles against the glass as he spoke.

“Excuse me?”

“Whoever sent you here," he clarified. "What happens, if he finds you again?”

Loki sat up, crossing his legs to kneel before the glass window where the strange human watched him, his attention seemingly on the piece of tech in his hands. But Loki knew better. Loki, the trickster, the Mischief-Maker who learned to watch when others did not, who learned misdirection from the best. Frigga had tutored Loki, had shared her magic and her skills.

And her tricks.

“You know, Stark.” Loki let the amusement filter across his words. “You know there are fates worse than death.”

The man shrugged as he pocketed the device, and then looked up to find Loki’s face mere inches from the glass in front of him. He blinked owlishly at the taller man, before an easy grin slipped across his face. “I’ll see what I can do. But you should know, I don’t like it.”

“I don’t remember caring what an ant likes.”

“Funny,” the man grinned, before he pressed his lips to the glass once and waved as he departed, leaving a fading imprint behind. “Bye for now, Princess.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...”_

The worst part about walking through the threads of what might have been was the moment when Loki realized that Odin would never grant him death.

Even when Loki taunted and tormented Odin, and even Frigga, nothing worked; nothing he did forced Odin to override Frigga’s demands that he be spared Aesir’s highest form of justice.

It only took viewing a few more of the threads for Loki to realize Frigga had been the cause of his continued existence. He hated her for it, like a teenager hates the world, hated that she couldn’t just accept his fate and let him go. Hated that she pulled the threads to keep him alive, when all he wanted was to sleep, sleep where Thanos could never find him again.

And worse, Thor never believed him. Thor, the oaf that had created this mess with his failed invasion of Jötunheimr and his arrogant and belittling treatment of Loki, and yet Thor _never_ believed him in any of the threads he visited. Never believed that the Mad Titan coerced Loki. And worse, if he did believe Loki, it was because Thor trusted someone else, and that person had believed him. But never Loki, never on Loki’s word alone.

It was bad enough that Thor didn’t know him well enough after more than a thousand years not to doubt Loki’s intentions when Loki had set up the Chitauri invasion of Midgard to fail, to _look_ like he wanted a throne—but even in those strands when Loki had flat out _told_ Thor that he’d been tortured by Thanos, and the oaf ignored him? And carried him to Asgard, gagged and in chains, all the same?

It was constant, humiliating and painful to watch, as time and time again Thor didn’t believe him, never believed him. But that strange mortal Stark did, in more threads than Loki cared to remember.  And many times, the mortal known as Iron Man defended Loki, fought against Thor, against his own human friends. Fought against everyone. For him.

And when Loki woke the next morning after seeing those threads, he couldn’t decide which was worse: that Thor hadn’t believed him, had called him the God of Lies (liar, Loki thought, he’d only ever lied to save Thor), or that a pathetic human with higher than average intelligence and a fancy suit of armor knew Loki better than his own so-called family.

Those mornings, when Frigga had visited him to ask after the latest thread, Loki had _almost_ called her mother.

 _Almost_.

Imprisonment in the blindingly white dungeons was a constant, a given in almost every thread in which Loki returned to Asgard. Sometimes Odin sent him to Midgard to serve his sentence. Sometimes he was sent to Jötunheimr, for their punishment fit to his crimes against that world, so long as the monsters didn’t kill him.

Which they didn’t, unfortunately.

The threads were a bit like Yggdrasil: each stretched away from the main pathway, as though it were a thin twig that could have grown into a new branch but for the selection of a different thread for the tapestry. Those that were thicker were those that had been woven into the design; thinner ones, the ones Loki traveled, were rejected. Once he’d witnessed a thread that hadn’t been selected, the delicate fabric disintegrated, turning black in his fingers and leaving the god cold inside.

There were fewer and fewer strands the further Loki moved from the moment he arrived on Midgard. It was as though his decisions along the way had solidified the pathways, strengthened the thread that he now walked through the fates, braiding the strands together into a stronger line as he propelled himself forward.

But another pattern had begun to emerge through the threads, as Loki’s dreams crisscrossed amongst the different fates that never were, subtle enough that he hadn’t noticed it at first.

In the beginning, he’d thought it had been Frigga’s doing, that she had somehow manipulated the threads so Loki only saw the ones she wanted him to see, but even that didn’t make sense. For why would Frigga concern herself with the actions of a mere Midgardian mortal, a species so short in years that Loki had already lived a hundred lives in comparison?

Yet, time and time again, there he was: irreverent and annoying and doing his damnedest to prevent Loki from dying after he’d discovered the god’s little soul-gem colored secret. In countless iterations, Stark had figured out that Loki was under The Other’s yoke early enough to stop the destruction aboard the helicarrier.

In one thread, Loki had seen the mortal show up in Germany and immediately fire a repulsor blast at Loki’s chest, the shock of which had been so strong that the god skipped across the pavement like a smoothed out stone over water before his head came to rest inside a solid stone wall. Loki’s concussion then had been all-encompassing, he remembered how his head felt as though it would explode at the slightest movement, and yet it had grown so quiet inside the god’s own mind that the Loki of that thread began laughing almost the moment he awoke, laughing as heavy saltwater tears trailed down his cheeks, and the strange mortal came over and lifted his faceplate, then gently helped the god to his feet.

And then later, much later, Stark had kissed him. After Stark had prevented Thor from hauling Loki back to Asgard, and together the pair had sought out and defeated Thanos in the dark depths of the universe. And Loki could still remember the confusing feel of those warm lips on his after the battle, hesitant and unsure and perfect.

The strange mortal had become a persistent presence in the threads—the one confusing element within the tangled pathways—and more often than not he managed to interfere with Loki’s plans. And it was confusing, terrible and painful. Because what could ever come from it?

And one night as he closed his eyes, moments before he slipped into another dream-like walk of another Loki’s path, the god noticed that among the threads another gossamer pattern emerged, one that was red and gold and tinged with green and black and carried Frigga’s magic.

But what was it _doing_ there, her magic and influence against strands that didn’t come to pass. What good was her plucking and pulling of various threads now, when Loki was already locked away in the dungeons of Asgard for all eternity? The mortal would be dead within thirty years, maybe forty, what purpose were creatures with such short lives to the Aesir?

“I do wish you would remove this curse, Frigga,” he had said when she came to visit that week. “I’m tired of walking the pathways of Fates that the Three Sisters did not choose for me.”

“Sons who address their mothers disrespectfully don’t receive favors.”

“Frigga, are you actually trying now to bribe me into calling you _mother_ again?” Loki almost snorted at the absurdity.

“My son, you should know this by now. I _never_ tease.”

“I’m not—”

“My son, yes, yes, I know,” Frigga interrupted, giving Loki an exasperated look that the Trickster absolutely did not, under any circumstances, feel guilty about.

She hadn’t lifted the curse, and Loki had refused to talk to her at her next visit. Because what could he say? ‘ _Hello mother, I know you’ve tried to save me, but I’m most displeased that in none of the strands where I am returned to Asgard am I ever permitted to die_?’ It didn’t seem appropriate to say, even if he knew now that she hadn’t been the one to carry him into the world after all.

So he continued living, if one could call it that, surrounded by white and burning and shame. And anger, Loki acknowledged, as he tittered at the passing guard, relishing how the man stepped away from the barrier to Loki’s cell, as though he thought Loki might just be able to step outside, that his seidr might yet overpower the magic-restraining force field.

And the dreams continued.

* * *

Iron Man landed on the platform circular platform high above the city that stretched out from Stark Tower like a miniature runway and Loki grinned, pleased to see that the mortal had found him here after all. He’d figured it out, of course. Barton _had_ said the cocky mortal was a genius.

He smirked as he watched the mortal’s armor peel off piece-by-piece, revealing first a handsome smirking face and then the rest of the casually dressed mortal known as Tony Stark. “Please tell me you are going to appeal to my humanity,” he said, twirling the scepter in his hand.

“Uh, actually, I’m planning to threaten you,” the man responded.

Loki snorted a laugh. “You should have left your armor on for that,” he smirked.

“Yeah. Seen a bit of mileage and you’ve got the, ah, glow-stick of destiny. Would you like a drink?” the man moved with a nervous energy, taking quick efficient steps to the bar. He pulled out glassware, his fingers and toes tapping as he walked, as though the very thought of standing still for even a moment was too great a burden to bear.

“Stalling me won’t change anything,” Loki sneered, letting the satisfaction of his impending victory sate the pressure of the hooks in his mind. It was all under control, all under control, and of _no consequence_ that the Midgardian known as Stark had arrived earlier than expected.

“No, no, no, threatening. No drink, you sure? I’m having one.”

“The Chitauri are coming. Nothing will change that. What have I to fear?” Loki turned from the window, appraising the mortal.

“The Avengers,” Stark rolled his eyes and shrugged as he uncorked a bottle. “S’what we call ourselves. Sorta like a team. Earth’s mightiest heroes sort of thing.”

“Yes, I’ve met them,” Loki grinned. He could feel The Other’s presence growling his interest in Stark’s blue circle against his chest, and Loki worried a fingernail as he tried to maintain his temper at the intrusion.

“There is no throne,” Stark continued. “There is no version of this where you come out on top. But you know what’s worse? You don’t even want to come out on top.”

“Oh?” Loki smirked, “Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. Call me crazy,” and Stark rolled his eyes and shrugged, “but I think you’re doing this for someone else, some really scary megalomaniac, bigger and badder than you are. Someone who’s already got your panties twisted in a bunch around your balls. Know how I can tell?”

“Oh, by all means," Loki invited, his voice a velvet noose, "enlighten me, Ant.”

Stark sipped his drink. “You set up that hunk of junk,” he threw a careless wave towards the patio with the Tesseract, “on _my_ balcony—which, by the way, you asshole, completely clashes with my brand new outdoors furniture—on _my_ tower, in one of the biggest cities on Midgard. This isn’t an invasion; it’s a cry for attention.”

Loki chuckled, “Is that what you think? I have an army.”

“And we have a hulk,” Stark took another sip, his fingers fiddling with something on the counter that Loki couldn’t see. “So what is it, then, Rock of Ages? Daddy issues? Or maybe it’s mommy? Got an Oedipus complex? Boo fuckin’ hoo. Seriously, drink?” the man shook a glass in Loki’s direction, the ice clinked against the glass in sharp, crisp sounds, and the god let his grin widen as he reached over to accept the glass.

“I suppose I can toast to my success,” Loki inured. The glass was heavier than he’d expected, and his fingers tightened carefully around the angled edges.

“Wow, you really are bag of cats crazy, aren’t you?” Stark took another sip. “Rude. I was hoping that was all for show.”

Loki ignored him, sniffing the beverage that Stark had prepared. The smell was smoky and warm, and it reminded Loki of something, of a scent that he thought he should recognize, like brimstone and gasoline. He knew it shouldn’t make sense, but the smell was comforting, the way he felt the tower to be, and he had the strangest sense of déjà vu. As though someone had manipulated Loki’s memories so that he would think it was something more, something different than what he knew happened, of smelling this beverage and taking comfort in the scent.

He sipped the beverage, before he remembered what he was doing here, before The Other took notice. It was warm and burned in a painful stripe as it drained down his throat, and he took a second sip under the mortal’s careful watch.

On his third sip, Loki had a revelation. Whatever it was in this glass, it loosened the hold on his mind. He could feel the poisonous hooks shifting sideways, as though each sip slowly reduced their control. He could feel The Other’s sudden rage against his consciousness, but it was distant, far away as though he’d sprinted across the Bifrost, across the universe.

There was no reason why Midgardian liquor should affect him, no possibility that it would break the connection to his soul, unless… unless he’d arrived on Midgard weaker than he’d believed, weaker and wan and beyond the ability of his seidr to heal him, to protect him from the effects of Midgard’s ales when it still couldn’t heal all the scars and wounds from his time with The Other, when the hooks still burned and splintered in black-blue streaks of light and pain across his mind.

He tossed back the drink and turned crazed eyes towards Stark. “Another! Quick!”

“Geez, that’s like eighteen year old scotch, slow down a bit maybe? I mean, what do I know? Ant and all,” the mortal said as he poured Loki another, and the god greedily snatched the bottle instead from Stark’s hands, putting the rim to his lips before draining it in four quick gulps, oblivious to the mortal’s shout of protest. The bottle slipped from his lax fingers, empty, and smashed into a thousand glass shards, scattering around the god like tiny splinters of the shattered bifrost.

And Loki fell, glass digging into his knees, as though the puppet strings had stretched and snapped tonelessly against his skin. He heaved forward, elbows crashing into the tile, his arms too weak to support his weight, and let himself slide down onto the floor. The cool tiles beneath his forehead soothed the ache against his skull, and Loki let himself stretch out, let the silence linger as he inhaled deep, painful breaths against the burn in his lungs.

It had been years since he’d eaten anything of substance, and the liquid burned in his gut, as if the God of Fire had set fire to his insides instead, and Loki’s breaths became high-pitched laughter as he struggled to move his forehead from the tile, but it just felt, it was all so—

“Uh. What the actual fuck. Jarvis, is he alive? Did he just die of alcohol poisoning or something? That was way too goddamn easy,” the mortal peered over the bar, before he cautiously came around to press his toe into Loki’s side.

The god curled in on himself, his hands coming to rest protectively across his abdomen, before he gave a pained laugh that turned into a gasping cackle, chest heaving with each battered gasp as he wheezed.

“Bambi? They do actually _have_ liquor on Asgard, yes?” the man asked, his voice tinged with something akin to worry “Oh fuck, Thor is going to kill me.”

“I’m such a fool, it was so simple. It was so simple. I’m such a fool.” Loki murmured. He rolled to the side, and Stark took a step back as Loki’s hands brushed glass from his palms, bloody droplets sticking to glass and skin. “Stark, you _are_ a genius.”

“Uh. Yes?” Stark looked at his own glass and took another sip, before he shrugged. “Definitely tastes alright. Thanks for not leaving me anymore. Rude.”

Loki didn’t reply as he stumbled quickly to his feet and rushed towards the balcony.

“Whoa!” Stark shouted behind him, but Loki ignored him. There was no time.

With one hand he scooped up the scepter as he ran, ignoring everything else as he sprinted from the launch platform and leapt towards the roof where the portal rested. He caught himself of the edge of the building with one arm, and hauled himself over the side, careful to keep the scepter from touching the ground.

“Mayday! Mayday! Crazy and now drunk god up here! Jarvis, need a suit!” Loki heard the man shouting in the background as the wind whipped around him.

It looked innocent enough, a mass of wires and metals from Midgard, and Loki hefted the scepter, his grip tightening around the center of the spear. His fingers tingled, burned against his sternum as his own seidr roared back to life, a mess of green and the tainted blue that it chased, rushing forward through his veins, and Loki again launched himself in the air, slamming the scepter against the mess of wires in an explosion of blue and green.

Stark’s shouting behind him ceased, and Loki swung the scepter again, destroying the device in a wash of green as his magic finally overpowered the last of the blue taint within his veins. His seidr rebounded through its old familiar channels in a terrifying explosion, unleashed and overriding the power of the scepter, cleansing and purifying and burning him deep inside. His very soul burned, burned like fire, like eating spice on Vanaheimr, like stepping out from the heat of the banya into ice and snow.

He saw out of the corner of his eye that Stark had ducked behind the patio furniture as pieces of metal exploded outward in all directions, before the mortal began yelling again, this time behind the god and decked in gold and red.

“Don’t come in guns blazing, Natasha, he’s sort of redecorating for us. I think he just broke this ugly thing. For the record, all I did was give him a drink!” Stark’s repulsors fired as the mortal ducked away from another metal fragment, which clunked in sharp ringing thumps against the steel and glass frame of the tower. “But it was really good scotch, so I can understand saving the planet for, y’know, more of that.”

Loki fell to his knees as the portal device overloaded, the blue Tesseract blazing in the center in a fiery blaze. He howled with laughter, louder and louder, until tears cascaded down his face and he slumped forward, barely conscious as his seidr drained through his scars and injuries, joints and bones barely held together with brilliant green knitting, in agony as his nerves reestablished long neglected pathways, aching and bright.

It was _done_.

A sharp pinprick caught in his neck and he turned to see the Hawk leaning out of a Midgardian transport, the black blades spinning above Loki in almost a hypnotic rhythm, and he could almost count the beats, one, two, three, before the god fell to the rooftop, unconscious.

* * *

When he woke later, he was again inside the glass cell aboard the helicarrier.

His soul ached; it was as though his seidr had attacked with vengeful pride every injury, every scar that The Other had bestowed, and his very bones had been undone and remade again.

The mortal was waiting for him on the other side of the glass barrier.

Stark had changed clothes, and his goatee appeared clean-shaven. As though he’d actually slept and taken the time to clean up, Loki realized.

“How long?” the god asked as he pushed himself to sit against the glass wall.

“You’ve been out for almost a week. Thor went home yesterday with the Tesseract. Seemed convinced you wouldn’t want to stay on Midgard but Fury refused to let both you _and_ the Tesseract go back to Asgard.”

“So I’m yet again a war prize,” Loki chuckled darkly. “Don’t suppose Fury is interested in making a deal?”

“For what?” Stark asked.

“Whatever he wants,” Loki grinned, a feral grin with teeth and sinew.

“And what do you want in return?” Stark picked up a white stick, with a green tip on one side, before he removed the tip and began drawing little designs on the glass.

“Peace.”

“If by peace you mean death, I’m sorry to disappoint you but even SHIELD isn’t that bad usually. _Usually_. You did brainwash one of their best agents and destroy a facility that lead to a bunch of deaths. Not to mention, Phil. You killed Phil.”

Loki’s shoulders rose in the barest of shrugs. “Then it should be no issue to grant my request.”

“Yeah, except there’s just one problem,” Stark’s sketches became clearer, and it looked like he’d created a row of flowers with formulaic equations above. “I don’t think you wanted to do it.”

Loki chuckled, but even to his own ears the sound was choked, “Hasn’t Thor told you? I’m a monster, Stark.”

“Maybe,” the strange mortal acknowledged. “I probably am, too. But there are bigger monsters out there, right? And I’d bet half my company that one of them found you first.”

“You are a strange man, Stark.”

The mortal grinned. “You have no idea, Lokes.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re beautiful, but you’re empty. No one could die for you.”_

“I do find him ever so fascinating, don’t you?” she had asked the next day.

“Who?”

Frigga’s exasperated laugh grated on his nerves. “You know of whom I speak. That mortal who keeps interfering in various threads, Anthony Stark.”

Loki glowered at Frigga, before he picked up one of the books she’d had delivered. “It is of little concern to me.”

Frigga laughed again. It was a bright, tinkling noise, like wind-catcher pipes in the garden, and the sound made Loki’s chest ache. “Oh come now, Loki,” Frigga smiled, “surely you must be curious. Why, in every thread you’ve encountered him, he seems to be rather charming, does he not?”

“Are you attempting to play matchmaker, or is this too part of my punishment?” he rumbled, angry and infuriated at himself, unable to keep the hurt from his tone.

Frigga sighed, but seated her projection-self along side him. “I had hoped you would see what he will see, but I can tell you’ve not viewed enough of the threads yet.”

“What he sees? I’m a monster, Frigga, incarcerated by Asgard for all of eternity. What could he _possibly_ see beyond that? And why must you continue to perpetuate this false _idea_ that I would seek to find comfort with another man, when you know full well that such perversions are beneath a prince of Asgard—” Loki choked on his words, his teeth biting sharply into his lip as he winced, “even a _former_ prince? No matter how much you _wished_ for a daughter you instead received a Frost Giant, so cease this—”

“Oh, for Norns' sake, Loki!” Frigga snapped, and he was certain that, for once, if she could touch him she’d have slapped him across the cheek that very moment. “You think me blind? You think I haven’t noticed, haven’t _seen_ your lovers? That I’d care who you share affections with?”

“Why would you not?” Loki grumbled. “Everyone else in Asgard has an opinion.”

Frigga pursed her lips together, and Loki watched as she stood to pace the length of his small cell several times before her temper had been restrained enough for her words.

“And yet, I love you just the same,” she replied.

Loki pinched the bridge of his nose. She was up to something, of this he was certain, but what could she mean to do? What hope was there to change the All-Father’s mind, to finally listen to what Loki had to say, when he hadn’t even shared with Frigga where he had spent the time after his fall from the Bifrost?

“What have you done?” he finally asked. “Why is this mortal so important to you?”

Frigga smirked, her eyes twinkled with mirth and mischief, a look Loki recognized all too well. “Why are you so certain I’ve done anything?”

“For once, cease your cryptic answers and be forward with me,” Loki picked up his book, thumbing to the page he’d last read. After a moment, though, he snapped the pages shut. “I’m bored of this game, Frigga.”

“Your life is no game, Loki.”

Loki ignored her, choosing instead to stand as he watched another progression of prisoners march through the dungeons.  Bloodied and injured, this sorry lot had chains around their wrists and ankles and carried forward in solemn lines through the dark halls.

“Odin continues to bring me new friends,” he purred. “How thoughtful.”

“The books I’ve sent, do they not interest you?” she asked, and Loki turned to see her leaning over to read the title of the book he’d abandoned. So this is the game they would play, he grimaced, ignoring whatever ploy she’s devised and distracting Loki with simple, mundane things.

“Ah,” Loki affected an apathetic facade, “Is that how I’m to while away eternity? Reading?” he paced across the room, his anger apparent in the tense line of his shoulders and neck, muscle and sinew pulled tight against his thin green prison garb.

“I’ve done everything in my power to make you comfortable, Loki,” she interjected.

“Have you?” Loki deadpanned. “Does Odin share your concern? Does Thor? It must be so inconvenient, them asking after me, day and night.”

Frigga’s incredulous expression was worth the pain he felt in mention his former family, he thought. They would regret locking him away—without _listening_ to him, without even _asking_ him to explain—when Thanos arrived for him. The Mad Titan would make them _all_ suffer, before he bothered to make Loki pay for his betrayal.

“You know full well it was your actions that brought you here,” Frigga continued, and Loki scoffed and at the last moment withheld a chuckle at the absurdity.

“My actions?” he recited, his face betraying none of the hurt he felt. “I was merely giving truth to the lie I was fed my entire life, that I was born to be a king.”

He paced across the room in tight circles around Frigga, like a mongoose sighting its prey. If Frigga—she who had _seen_ the thousands upon thousands of threads where Stark discovered Loki’s perversion by The Other, and she hadn’t even entertained the sentiments that her darling boy could have been coerced into his actions on Midgard—couldn’t for one moment understand his loss of control after learning that his life was a lie, Loki hadn’t stood a chance.

“A king?” she huffed. “A true king admits his faults. What of the lives you took on Midgard?” she prodded. “Or Jötunheimr?”

And there it was. Everything was still _his_ fault. He had caused Thor to fall from grace; he had let the Frost Giants into the vault; maybe he had been to blame for Jötunheimr, sure, but surely that at least could be understood, when Odin himself had raised Loki to hate the blue-skinned monsters, hate and fear and never understand, never grant them the Norn-given rights owed to the others of the Nine.  Was it so surprising, then, that Loki would have in a moment of weakness sought to destroy that which made him different, too?

Oh, but Midgard. _Midgard_. The name turned over and over in Loki’s mind like a festering wound, dripping with puss and destroying the flesh around it, painful and bright. After everything, after all she could have seen, he was still to blame for Midgard, for everything that happened to the pathetic humans when Loki’s own soul, his very essence and magic were in the hands of a Mad Titan’s minion. And she couldn’t see, couldn’t observe and understand the very threads she had cursed him to witness nightly.

“A mere handful compared to the number that Odin has taken himself,” Loki snapped, his sharp footfalls echoing around the chamber.

“Your father—”

“He is _NOT_ my father!” Loki shouted as he spun to face her, his fists bunching tightly at his sides. He would _never_ acknowledge that man again, the man who had stolen him, _abandoned_ him to The Other, to the fates, to slowly and painfully rot in Asgard’s dungeons.

“And am I not your mother?” Frigga whispered.

“You’re not,” Loki hesitated, his heart racing against his ribs in a fierce, painful texture. He thought for a moment it had shattered, burst in a flare of color and flame, and then the trickster inhaled again, and again.

“Hmmm,” Frigga muttered, as she stepped forward and reached her hands out to him. “You’re always so perceptive about everyone but yourself.”

Loki let his eyes fall and shook his head ever so slightly, an apology on the tip of his tongue before he let his hand pass through her illusion’s form, then watched in aching silence as Frigga’s image faded, her yellow-tinted seidr dissolving into thin air.

It had always been hopeless, he thought. He was a fool for thinking she might listen, might one day be willing to take his case to Odin. Might one day choose to believe _him_ over the All-Father. Might believe him, if he were to tell her of the scars he still bore, of the nightmares that crept into the edges of his consciousness, even still against the horizon of visions of the threads.

Loki slowly paced across the room again, taking satisfaction in the curt clicks of his footfalls as he walked,  studying the prisoners in their cells that surrounded his own gilded cage. Odin had been busy, indeed; more and more prisoners had filtered into the dungeons, from across the many different realms.

But Frigga was right about one thing, at least.

He dropped wearily to the bed and threw up an illusion across the screens. The god closed his eyes, letting the room slide away. From the outside, the guards would see Loki sleeping, an arm draped across his face, none the wiser for what would happen next. 

Loki slipped a hand inside his trousers, undoing the clasps with the other. Nimble fingers found his cock as he imagined the hand of another, tanned and calloused and smaller than his own, stroking him through the thin fabric instead.

If Loki were honest, if he didn’t hide from himself, from everything he’d been taught as a child on Asgard, if he were to listen to what his soul desired for one moment, Stark would fit very well within what Loki had once imagined in a lover as a young man. Before Loki learned at the hands of Tyr and Thor and Fandral and Odin that to be loved like so was wrong, was immoral and disgusting and inappropriate for a prince of Asgard (but oh, how _little_ had Fandral minded _helping_ Loki when they were younger, the god thought bitterly).

Stark was none of that.

He was sarcastic, and amiable, and in several threads he flirted with anything that moved (including Loki, in chains, battered by the Hulk, or hunched down in the glass cage). He didn’t seem to care whether the object of his attentions was male, female, or an alien combination of the two, so long as he got to flash that smug grin of his and let loose with whatever inappropriate innuendoes had most recently occurred to the strange genius.

Like Loki had done, for so many centuries, before he learned to keep quiet, to hide his wicked tongue, to turn the jokes more acidic in retaliation for the wrongs against him.

He wondered if Stark would laugh at his pranks. Would he appreciate the tricks, in a way that no one but Frigga ever had on Asgard? Would he be amused by Loki’s antics and schemes? Frightened? He imagined the mortal laughing, his warm amber eyes twinkling with delight, his sharp grin burning brightly against the light, intelligent and aware and focused only on Loki.

He let his thumb graze across the head of his cock, rubbing small circles underneath as he pulled himself free from his undergarments. The mortal had a power to him; a strength that he’d noticed even without Frigga’s constant prodding in the recent weeks. In most every thread, Stark had done something to protect Loki, stopped Loki from hurting himself, from hurting others, pulling Loki from the brink of death, from the edge of reason. Despite the fact that Loki was a monster, that Stark was this fragile, _human_ thing that would die at the slightest shove or push, that he wouldn’t live long enough, that he was frail and fragile and impermanent. Mortal.

It was infuriating, because in most every thread, the engineer seemed to want nothing in return (and Loki was decidedly _not_ thinking then about the thread where Stark demanded Loki serve as his sex slave for a year as recompense, no he was definitely _not thinking_ of that thread, damn the Norns).  Usually, Stark just stood there, smirking at Loki with an almost-gentle challenge in his eyes, and insisting that the God of Mischief had something worth living for.  

And Loki couldn’t understand why a hero from Midgard would even bother saving a monster like him.

He palmed himself and rocked into his fingers, faster and faster, skin raw and not slick enough against his sensitive flesh as he moved in short, tender jerks.

It wasn’t just the grace with which the mortal moved, when outside of his suit; when Loki had watched him pour a drink; the predatory look in the mortal’s eye in one thread when he leaned in to kiss Loki; or the calm focus in his eyes when he just sat outside Loki’s glass cell and talked to the god. It didn’t hurt that the curious genius was pleasing to the god’s eyes, with those amber-dark eyes and chestnut brown hair and the perpetually smoldering fury in his eyes when he looked at Loki, as though Loki were some problem to solve, a puzzle piece to click into place.

And the arrogance! To think that he, a mere mortal could solve Loki, could work through and fix what had broken asunder from a thousand years of neglect by those who were _supposed_ to have loved him, supposed to have _cared_ for him the most.

He imagined what it would be like to suck at Stark’s lip, to kiss and bite a line across the mortal’s sharp jawline, nibbling his way down to that mysterious blue light, the blue object that the scepter hadn’t pierced, that had rebounded Loki’s attempt to place the Man of Iron under his control.

He was so, so very thankful for that, now. Almost at the thought of Stark’s fierce independence, his spiky brown hair as conceited as the mortal’s words, Loki gasped aloud, and shuddered as a wave of painful pleasure surged through him, his cock sputtering in the barest imitation of pleasure.

He came, but it felt empty.

It _hurt_ , to know that he’d never feel the touch of another against his skin, never again. That no matter what Frigga believed, he’d die in this cell, isolated and alone, the forgotten former younger Prince of Asgard. A monster, left to waste away to nothing in the depths of this golden realm.

Loki wiped himself clean and straightened his clothing, before he waived off the illusion and turned his back to the force field, letting himself relax as his breath evened out.

Yes, Stark was fascinating. And if the only place Loki saw the man was amongst the various threads of what never would be, then he would sleep until all of the pathways burned to dust, but for the strand that the Fates had chosen.

It would never be enough.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend."_

“You okay there, Bambi?” the infuriating mortal asked.

The god narrowed his eyes as he looked down his nose at Stark, on the other side of the glass wall. The genius had cleaned up after the attack, changed into a white pinstripe suit and his goatee was trim and neat.

“Muzzle not too tight? Excited to go home to see All-Daddy?” the man continued, grinning winsomely.

Loki let his eyes fall closed instead, as though if he just shut out the light for a moment, none of this would have happened. As though Thor wouldn’t have muzzled him the moment he tried to speak again, before his injuries received at the hands of the green monster had even had the chance to heal.

Before Stark could pour that promised drink.

“No, really, Rock of Ages. I need an answer here," the man insisted, this time with no trace of humor in his voice. "Do you really want to go back to Asgard?”

Loki opened his eyes to find the man tapping on the glass, like one might awaken a drunken companion at the end of a feast.

“Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

Loki blinked.

“And what will happen on Asgard, when you get there? Will you get a trial?”

Loki blinked twice.

“No? No trial?”

He blinked again.

“What about prison?”

Loki blinked twice, again, and cocked his head as he studied the odd mortal. What could this man really care for the Aesir justice system? Hadn’t he almost died, carrying the missile his own people had launched at the city?

“No, not prison? So Odin goes right for the death penalty? Or torture?”

Loki blinked once, and then forced his expression into the imitation of a smirk at the edges of his cheeks, ignoring the painful pull as the gag dug into his lips and cheeks. He imagined saying to the mortal, _Does that please you, Stark?_

These humans, thinking they were so morally advanced, and yet here this one was, reveling in the details of the fate that awaited Loki in Asgard. What puny creatures.

“Alright. Good enough for now. I’ll see what I can do. Don’t die on me in the next hour, alright Princess?”

Loki rolled his eyes as he watched the mortal leave. It would not matter.  As much as he’d rather not return, Thor had already said he take Loki to Asgard with the Tesseract. He eased himself down against the wall, letting his long legs stretch out in front of him, and his head lolled to the side as he rested.

Loki longed for the end, to let his fate finally play out as it had always been intended. Just a little longer, he thought, just a few more days and Odin would execute him. _Finally_. And it would end; it would blessedly, finally, be over.

He didn’t resist, when Thor arrived to escort him to their departure point. Cuffed and muzzled, the sharp edges of the metal device digging into his cheeks every time he moved his mouth,

Loki was weakened from battle, from the final moments when the Hulk had finally beaten the presence of The Other from Loki’s mind. His chest ached, and he felt heavy, as though the terrors upon terrors heaped across his shoulders had pushed him into the ground, had weighed down his sides and worked through his legs and arms, like the metal bars that had skewered his flesh, pinning him to the wall, during his captivity with Thanos.

He was a monster in pretty clothing, dressed and stuffed into the form of an Aesir. Nothing. A waste of the resources spent clothing and imprisoning him. Invisible but for the shadow he cast.

Loki kept his eyes downcast as Thor’s bruising grip pulled him down the corridor. A wad of spit landed across his cheek and Loki flinched, but didn’t move to wipe it away. Another followed, and another wet splash landed on his cheek, and Loki closed his eyes, letting Thor guide him, letting the vengeful visages of the mortals around him fall away.

It mattered not; he’d leave all of these realms behind forever, soon enough.

* * *

Walking to his death was easier than he’d thought. Easier than letting go of Odin’s spear, than falling away from Thor’s anguished scream. For he had nothing now, and there was nothing more to lose. He’d been a puppet for so long; what were a few more days of letting the strings of Fate pull him along, when he was so close—finally so close—to getting what he’d wanted since that terrible day on the Bifrost.

It was a short ride from SHIELD’s holding facility to an open-spaced park that Loki remembered to be towards the center of New York, not far from Stark’s tower. Thor’s punishing grip had not abated, and Loki didn’t look away from the stonework as Thor pulled him from the transport vehicle, to stand in the center of a circle of paved circle while Thor secured the Tesseract.

He watched the Avengers through hooded eyes as the mortal with the green monster inside and Selvig put the Tesseract into the All-Father’s container. Seeing the Tesseract made Loki nauseated. It sang to the edges of the hooks, where the residue of The Other’s presence rotted, and it left Loki feeling violated and dirty.

Acid roiled in his stomach, and Loki looked away.

Stark stood at the edge of the gathering, hands tucked firmly in his suit pockets, watching Loki. Their eyes met, and Loki looked away. Whatever Stark had intended to do after their one-sided conversation earlier, he obviously had changed his mind.

Not that Loki could blame him, of course.

To his left, Romanova whispered something to Barton, and the man smirked in response, and Stark kicked over the silver case at his feet with a bang that echoed across the stonework.

Loki let his eyes close, and he swayed ever so slightly on his feet in the red-tinted darkness.

Then Thor moved to stand before him, the Tesseract in his hands. Loki grabbed the container’s handle, and waited for Thor to engage the Tesseract, the power of which would allow Odin to bring the pair to Asgard without calling on dark energy.

It would be simple. Almost like letting go. He was certain he could goad Odin into acting, a quick death, fast and painless.

Thor nodded to the others, and Loki’s teeth clenched, willing him to get on with it, to end this farce, so that Loki could rest once and for all.

And just as Thor clicked the handle in place, the Tesseract’s blue energy cocooning around Loki’s arm, a burning red-gold shape tackled him from behind, jerked Loki away from the blue energy crackling behind the glass of the All-Father’s container.  In a blaze of blue Thor disappeared back to Asgard alone, leaving a stunned Loki in the grasp of Iron Man.

“What the actual fuck, Stark!” Barton shouted, as the metal armor holding Loki slowly descended back to the pavement.

Loki sank to his knees the moment Iron Man’s armored boots clanked to the ground. He tried to take in a deep breath, but the gag prevented him, and he sucked in raggedly through his nose, wheezing. His chest burned and his heart raced, with each panicked breath as the moment stretched longer and longer, and the truth hit him, the truth that he wasn’t going to be returned to Asgard, that he might not die after all, because this _stupid_ mortal had interfered.

His breaths came in short pants and he felt a gentle pressure on his shoulder, and he flinched at the unexpected contact, incredulous to find metal fingers resting lightly on his arm—as though Stark was trying to calm the god. He wheezed, his fear and anger bleeding into an overwhelming sense of loss; he had been so close, so close—only to have it yanked from his grasp yet again. All because he’d made the mistake of answering that idiotic man honestly.

For once in his Norn-damned life, he’d actually been honest, and this was his reward.

“He was all blue-eyed just like you, bird brain. Last time I checked, we don’t extradite innocents to face the death penalty,” Stark’s faceplate lifted, and Loki looked up to see the inventor’s handsome face, as the genius glared at his fellow Avengers and positioned himself between the others and the kneeling god. “Unless, of course, we’re supposed to prosecute you too?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Barton exclaimed. “It’s Loki, for fucks sake! The alien who just led a massive invasion against Earth! Remember? You almost died!”

“Well, I didn’t,” Stark answered, a metal hand wrapping around Loki’s elbow as he pulled the taller man to stand beside him. “And I know what tortured and coerced looks like when I see it.”

“It wasn’t your call, Stark,” the Captain barked.

“Yeah? Well, I made it my call," Stark replied pointedly, talking over the Captain to get the message across. "I’m sorry, am I the only one who saw the security footage from SHIELD’s secret test site, when Crazy Pants here arrived and made Barton a meat puppet? Deranged looking with blue eyes? And beyond exhausted?”

“Damn it, Stark,” Romanova hissed. “Stop hacking SHIELD’s systems.”

“Make me, Rushman.”

“Wait, there’s security footage?” Banner interjected, and Loki looked up, startled to find that the man looked a tad bit green around his eyes. “Why didn’t we see that? More importantly, why am I not surprised?”

“Because it’s SHIELD,” Stark snarled back. “Now who gets to call Fury and make his day?”

Rogers sighed, but stepped away from the group as he pulled a mobile from his jacket pocket.

“You realize he still has his magic, and the only one of us that was of any real threat to him just left the planet?” Romanova said to Stark, and Loki could tell the man had shrugged in the suit because the fingers on his elbow tightened.

Loki grimaced behind the gag, the pointed spikes that held his mouth immobile driving into his lips, and he flinched as she stepped closer. A sharp pinch in his neck, suddenly—Loki turned abruptly to find Romanova removing a syringe.

“Wow, Natalie, you really like injecting people with unknown chemicals without their consent, don’t you?” Stark spat. “Congratulations, you are probably the first person to ever give a _god_ cancer. That’s ironic.”

“Shut up,” she growled.

Loki’s eyelids drooped, before his knees became heavier and heavier, and he remembered the man in the red armor picking him up, scooping him into his metal arms like Loki was a blushing bride. He knew he should be angry, but everything fell away afterwards, and the weight of his limbs dragged him further and further into the edge of the abyss. His last thought was that it was too bad, that whatever dose Romanova had carried to knock out the Hulk, had worked instead on him.

But at least someone on Midgard knew how to contain the monsters.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”_

He woke in the cell he’d resided in before. The gag and cuffs had been removed, but his wrists still ached.

Loki stretched his legs outward, relishing the feeling of moving his muscles without pain. He felt lighter, as though his bones had been remade of a new material. It was disconcerting, the feeling that he might float away at any moment but for the weight around his wrists, this weightlessness in his very structure. He flicked his fingers across his arms and his nail caught on a thin, almost invisible strand around his wrist, with a matching one around the other.

Ah, he exhaled, relieved. His magic had been bound. He fingered the thread, rubbing the thin cord between his fingers, the gossamer weight nothing against his grip but he knew without trying that it was just as unbreakable as it was invisible to the mortals surrounding him. Loki glanced at his wrist, and let out a surprised cry as he realized _he_ couldn’t see the strands either. 

But if he couldn’t see the strands, if it were invisible to him—

Loki let out a slow, shuddering gasp. Odin knew where he was, and didn’t plan on retrieving him. The god’s chin fell forward, his head too heavy to support any longer, and he curled inward, pulling his wrists to his chest and across his face. His eyes burned with moisture, hot and bright, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

If Odin had abandoned him here to Midgard, powerless and mortal, would they too not grant him death? Was he doomed to be their plaything for another eternity, abandoned like Thanos said he—

“About goddamn time you woke up, Real Power,” Fury’s voice barked behind him, outside the glass, and Loki scrambled to sit up, his back flat against the wall. His head spun, the room was white and spinning in odd rhythms; he looked towards the voice but everything dragged slowly across his vision from left to right, echoes of images and figures outside the glass in rippled patterns.

“What did you do to me?” he whispered, opening his mouth wide to rub at the soreness in his jaw.

Fury grinned, and Loki pressed himself more firmly against the wall. “Do you know how much it costs to sedate you? Two weeks’ worth of sedative, let’s just say your new _friend_ Stark has promised me some very large, very expensive helicarriers in exchange.”

“What am I doing here?” Loki choked out; his throat was like sand and fire, and his lips ached from the small movements, as though he hadn’t spoken in so long that his muscles had forgotten how to move.

“We made a deal with the All-Father. You get probation on Earth, and in exchange we get to ask some questions. Oh, and you’re mortal too. So don’t get cute with me, asshole.”

Loki laughed.

It started as a low, helpless chuckle, before it grew and grew, until his shoulders shook and tears trailed down his cheeks.

He laughed and laughed until his sides ached, until his eyes were red rimmed and his vision bleary through his tears, and he rolled onto his side. He didn’t hear Fury depart, he didn’t hear the locks re-engage, or the clatter of the tray shoved through an opening to his right, he didn’t hear the guard’s shift change outside. It was too much, too much and too hard, and to think that he’d been offered the same punishment as Thor, exiled to Midgard as a mortal, but even now, ha, even now he was not Thor’s equal. He’d been handed over, punished by Asgard but left to the tender ministrations of humanity, an alien monster in a cage and kept for their amusement.

Fury would torture him, take him apart at the seams and open up his insides to see what made the alien god tick. Discover all of his secrets; pulling his seidr out, moment by moment—and then, when he was done, maybe, just maybe, if Loki were lucky enough, he would let the god die. There was no doubt in his mind. For when SHIELD asked their questions and Loki couldn’t answer—wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t give them anything more, any more ways to hurt him—humanity, it was the same as everywhere else, just as dirty and perverse and polluted, and they would try to hurt him. Just like—

Loki choked back a whine that caught in his throat, and blinked the traitorous tears away. It _wouldn’t_ matter. It wouldn’t matter. Nothing they could do to him would matter, nothing could compare—nothing could ever compare—to that black and vile and dank prison, rotting in his own flesh, broken and bruised and forgotten.

Unwanted.

He curled up on the thin mattress, with his knees tucked in close to his chest, and slept.

His dreams were troubled, in his first real rest in years, since before The Other and Thanos had plucked him from the nothingness, since he had fallen among the ice and snow and black depths of the abyss. Nothing into nothing.

But then there _was_ something, someone, and he remembered the feeling of an endless moment of agony. He remembered the hell that existed within, the in-between place, limbo between life and death and knowing but not truly knowing what would come next. How The Other had taken Loki apart again and again and again, and the red, red, vivid red, red held so much promise, with yellow (or was it gold? he couldn’t remember now) smeared across the top in a vile stroke and the sounds the young god had made, oh the sounds and screams and begging, so many times, so many wishes for it to end, for everything to finally end, and oh so much, too much, so many noises, so many colors—

He awoke with a startled scream, and looked down in horror as the blue crept across his fingertips, down his palms. Loki shouted again, but it did nothing to dislodge the blue, and he tucked his shaking, unnaturally colored hands underneath his legs as the guards peered at him from outside the glass.

It was the restraints on his seidr, Loki thought. Somehow, Odin’s fetters couldn’t overcome Loki’s distress, and his illusion of self as an Aesir was stretched, pushed beyond its capabilities, and the god’s true nature, the monster hiding beneath the surface, peeked through.

Of course, _now_ the monster would show. Where the god’s very presence would not force Odin’s hand to either execute the Frost Giant that Odin had masqueraded as a prince, or hide him away forever, his grotesque form hidden behind Odin’s own seidr.

But the humans might notice, might take him apart to see what magic his body held, how high an alien might jump for his captors as they sought to define and catalog and understand the blue lines slowly curling up Loki’s arms. He hunched over, willing his hands to stop shaking, willing his eyes to close.

Willing the nightmares to end.

* * *

Romanova came next. She offered him rewards, treats and trinkets he could earn as though he were a prized stallion. As though he were a goddamn Midgardian slave.  

But Loki would never bow again. Not after—not since—just never again.

From her, he learned that Stark had negotiated the terms of his release with Asgard, and secured his probation on Midgard. That Stark had agreed to be _personally_ liable for Loki, so the God of Mischief better not fuck up.

He laughed at Romanova. As though it mattered what an ant had sworn! And besides, wasn’t he still the God of Fire? Mischief wasn’t really fair, not when it hadn’t been his idea.

Thor hadn’t returned for him, after all. Hadn’t _wanted_ to see Loki, according to Asgard’s liaison. Instead, Odin had sent Sif to negotiate the terms of his sentence, he learned. And Loki laughed, because of course the All-Father sent Sif, she who had pursued Thor for centuries, she who had fought by the Thunderer’s side for thousands of battles. What better message to Thor’s Midgardian love interest?

He was no longer a threat, Romanova said. SHIELD was calling the shots. But Stark was convinced he had been controlled, a puppet on a string. She’d known puppets, she said, good men who acted against what they would normally do, because they were told their actions were justified, or that their families would be killed. Or threatened with torments beyond comprehension.  Which one was he?

Loki ignored her.

He sometimes would exhale on the glass, letting his cold breath fog the surface, before he wrote his name in runic letters. The first time he did so, Romanova went still before she jotted down what he had written.

The second time, she rolled her eyes and left.

He waited for the torture to begin. For surely the mortals couldn’t resist the lure of having a god in their presence. Maybe his blood would cure aging for Midgard. Maybe he held the secret to some form of cancer, or blood disorder. Or maybe the humans would just want vengeance, just cut him to see him bleed; listen to him scream. To see if he bled like they did, if he would bleed and die and not die.

He waited for the torture to begin, but days passed, then weeks, and then Loki had been SHIELD’s prisoner, waiting, for almost a month.

Nothing happened.

Fury still dropped by occasionally, but he mostly just looked at the god and shook his head, as though Loki had disappointed him somehow, as though Loki had failed him; as though he expected more from a trickster god, leader of a failed alien invasion.

It was funny, Loki thought (if he bothered to think at all). He failed everyone with an eye patch, one way or another. It was his true destiny, after all.

Barton slipped through the doorway, once. When the guard changed, one brave soul opened the door to slip in fresh sheets and a towel and to collect Loki’s soiled items. Loki didn’t care, he hadn’t moved from where he sat on the floor in almost a week.

But the archer slipped inside, and before Loki could even blink at him, he’d shot an arrow clean through the Trickster’s left arm, pinning him to the wall.

Loki watched the blood pool on the floor, before he turned to the surprised expression of the Avenger’s famous archer. “You missed,” he chuckled; a deep, bitter laugh that made Barton shake. The god pointed to a spot on his chest, pulling at the hem of his shirt. “Right here. This is where my heart should be. Shoot here, little hawk.”

Barton had fled, Loki’s manic laughter chasing him from the room.

Later Romanova appeared, and soon after, a smaller dart landed in his thigh, and before Loki could remove it, he’d slumped to the side, unconscious.

* * *

When he woke again, his arm was bandaged and the arrow had been removed. He might have been cleaner, too, and his clothes were new, but Loki couldn’t be bothered with trying to figure that out. The skin beneath the bandages felt tight, and it pulled when he moved, and he felt warm. His vision trailed across the room in that sickening slow drag that Loki had come to associate with the drugs SHIELD used, and he let his eyes roam until he noticed a black object outside the glass, something he thought he should recognize.

Loki steadied himself, resting his head on his arms and blinked. As the fog cleared and the room stopped moving, he recognized him. Stark. The mortal sat on the other side of the glass, chewing what looked to be a circular sandwich wrapped in yellowed paper, his warm brown eyes studying the god as though Loki were a machine that needed to be disassembled, reworked down to its core.

“Come to gloat?” Loki lurched ungracefully to his feet, a heavy hand on the wall behind him. “Come to see the god in a cage?”

“No, no,” the mortal smiled gently, and Loki hated him for it. “Threaten. Remember?”

“Go away,” Loki said, and he turned his back towards the glass. He made the two steps to his bed and curled up with his back towards Stark.

“Rude,” the mortal said. “That’s okay. I’ve been told I can talk enough for two people.”

After that, Stark came to visit every day.

He talked, and Loki tried to ignore him, tried not to listen. He told Loki about how the god looked like shit. He asked Loki who had sent him, and if it was like in Harry Potter where Loki couldn’t say the evil bad guy’s name, lest his magical powers come down like an electrical storm and kill the person who’s named him (which was the most ridiculous thing Loki had ever heard; first of all, because he didn’t think Midgardians actually _had_ seidr). He harangued Loki to eat. To shower. To move from the corner of the floor that Loki had laid down in two weeks ago.

Sometimes it grew quiet, and Loki slept. And when he slept, he fell into haunting dreams, nightmares of his time with The Other, red, green, yellow, blue, black and blue and pain and red, red, red, and he woke up screaming.

And sometimes when he woke up screaming, his hands turned blue, and the taint crept up to his elbows, up his arms like flesh struck by plague and ravaged by the elements. And Loki’s shoulders would shake, and he would keen, over and over until the blue faded, until the dreams faded, until Loki faded too.

Those were the worst moments. When he knew he would never die, never be granted that eternal relief.

For no matter what he did, no matter how he tormented his captors, had taunted Fury and Romanova then ignored them, ignored everything, no one hurt him. No one _hurt_ him.

He was hurt enough already, Stark said.

And then Stark disappeared again, and Loki’s shoulders drew tightly together, and then he was angry with himself because he hadn’t meant to find the mortal’s endless ramblings comforting, to find solace in the fact that Stark came by to spend an hour or more with the god every morning and talked about everything from the intergalactic asshole that the genius imagined had hurt Loki (he wasn’t far off on that one, Loki thought) to the mundane (it was summer in New York, supposedly).

Rogers came to visit while Stark was gone.

He said Stark had believed in Loki (Had? Did he change his mind? Or had something happened to the reckless mortal?), and Rogers let slip that Stark believed that Loki had been tortured. And Rogers told Loki that he was decidedly not okay with torture, and that now, nothing would happen to him even if—even if—

And that’s how Loki came to learn that Stark was missing, that everyone thought him dead. But Rogers wouldn’t let them change Stark’s orders, Loki was safe.

Well, Loki thought after the super soldier had left. At least he knew why SHIELD hadn’t decided to take him apart. Yet. There was time. They’d change their minds. They’d see his hands turn blue, they’d realize soon enough he wasn’t like them, that he wasn’t human. He wasn’t worth it.

Stark returned to visit a few weeks later, decidedly worse for wear.

His nose was bandaged in white strips and there were crude-looking lines across a cut in his forehead that almost appeared to Loki as though it had been sewn together like a torn shirt, of all things. His leg twitched impatiently, and he paced in front of the glass instead of sitting before Loki. He was quiet, Loki realized, as he pushed himself to sit against the wall for the first time in weeks. Too quiet.

Maybe Midgard was more frightening than he’d thought.

“Sorry I’ve been gone, Lokes,” the mortal began. “Had to save the world again.”

He just stood there, leaning against the glass, forehead pressed on the surface as he studied Loki. Like a bug inside a glass aquarium and the thought made the god’s lip turn up in the faintest line.

The next day, Stark returned.

He sat, and as Loki pushed himself vertical again, Stark talked. He told Loki the whole story, about the man who was the Mandarin but wasn’t, about his house falling into the ocean. About Pepper breaking up with him afterwards, because they worked better as friends than lovers, because she wanted more; because his nightmares were vivid and absolute. Stark said he had some syndrome that caused anxiety attacks after a traumatic event. That he still couldn’t stand the feel of water on his face, even after all this time, because of what _they_ did to him.

That he had nightmares. Like Loki’s nightmares, but with less blue.

Every day was a painful reminder that he had survived. Loki stopped eating for a time, lost weight, only to wake again groggy and heavy-feeling with a bandaged cotton ball stuck to the skin of the inside of his elbow and unable to focus on anything, to see without the room drifting in undulating waves.

And Stark returned again and again, and even Loki—wasting away inside the glass box—noticed the odd look upon the mortal’s face. Something like worry when his brown eyes met Loki’s green. Worry and fear.

Until one day, everything changed.

Loki’d already woken that morning from a particularly bad nightmare, when Stark showed up.

But instead of sitting by the glass, Stark went to the doorway. His fingers moved rapidly across the console beside the door, in quick darts of movement that even Loki’s keen eyesight couldn’t track. Suddenly the doorway opened, and Stark sauntered into Loki’s cell, two boxes tucked under his arm. “Hope you don’t mind, Lo-Lo, brought my own food. Because no offence, but I don’t _do_ prison grub.”

“What do you want, Stark?” Loki sighed, swallowing the painful tightness in his stomach as the mortal paced closer and handed Loki a box.

“Go on, open it,” Stark grinned.

Loki opened his carton, only to find several pastries with holes in the center.

“Donuts,” the mortal answered Loki’s unspoken demand. “The best comfort food there is.”

A sharp bang startled Loki, and he turned to see Fury and Romanova standing at the window, Fury’s mouth opened in a yell as Romanova tugged on the door.

“Oh, don’t mind them,” Stark grinned as he sat down beside Loki, stretching out his legs to imitate the god’s posture, his shoulder almost touching Loki’s every time he shifted. The mortal opened his box and pulled out one of the pastries without a center hole, covered across the top with a brown icing.

“This one’s my favorite. Chocolate Bavarian cream. You have one too,” Stark took a bite of the pastry and moaned.

Loki felt a blush creep over his cheeks.

Outside, Fury had taken to glaring daggers at Stark while Romanova had moved to one of the panels and was working furiously to dismantle the board.

“I don’t think your friends like that you’ve shared your donuts, Stark,” Loki muttered, before he selected one of the white-covered donuts from his box. The god put the pastry to his lips, and hesitated, glancing out of the corner of his eyes at Stark. The donut, he supposed, _could_ be poisoned, but Loki hadn’t expected to survive anyway.

He took a bite. It was pleasant, light and dense at the same time, and the white powder was sugar-sweet and clung to his lips. He licked at the white powder across his tongue and at the corner of his mouth, before taking another bite. And another.

“Huh,” Stark said beside him, and Loki glanced at the mortal, “If I’d have known all it took was donuts to get you to eat, I’d have done this weeks ago. Hey look, even Fury has settled down.”

Loki glanced at the window to see Fury waiving off Romanova’s disassembly of the panel, and with one last glare, the two stalked out of the room. Probably to a control booth nearby, thought Loki, but it wouldn’t matter.

“What are you doing here?” Loki finally asked, after the mortal had polished off another two donuts without saying a word.

“Me? Sitting with you, having donuts.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Why, you idiot? Why are you in my cell, consuming pastries?”

“Donuts. Not pastries.”

“You are insufferable,” Loki grumbled.

“Yup!” Stark crowed, before he licked his fingers then swiped his palm across his jeans. “Especially when I get an idea in my head. You know why you’re here, Loki?”

“Because you are an idiot?” the god asked.

“No, no, I told you before. I’m a genius. You see, I know that someone, somewhere in this universe, got to you before you got to Earth." Stark looked pleased that he'd been the only one to figure this out. "Because I know that you weren’t acting of your own free will, not really. Yes, you weren’t a puppet, you were in control, but something _motivated_ those actions and it wasn’t just the sarcastic asshole sitting next to me eating powdered sugar donuts.”

Loki looked away. “You know nothing.”

“I know you were hurt,” Stark argued. “I know you were tortured, and that when Hulk slammed you into my penthouse floors, something snapped. Broke inside. And the Loki after that, that was the real you. The sarcastic bastard who asked me for a drink while the Avengers looked on. The depressed loser who hasn’t bathed in,” Stark sniffed dramatically, “I don’t know, was it even this century? That’s real. Not the egotistical megalomaniac that badly fucks up an alien invasion accidentally." He paused and met Loki's eyes with something akin to complicity in his own. One trickster to another. "No, Lokes, you did that intentionally. You put those ugly pricks down in the most public place possible, like a beacon to the defenders of this planet.”

Loki’s hands shook, and he tucked his arms across his chest.

“And I’m going to prove it,” Stark continued. “With or without your help, I’m going to prove it.”

“Why?” Loki whimpered.

“Because I’ve been there. Because a man named Yinsen saved me, helped me, when I was a prisoner too. Tortured and made into a weapon, told to build bombs or they would keep hurting me. Or kill Yinsen." Stark looked down at the box of pastries. "I’ve been there. I know how it feels, trapped and just wanting the pain to end. But unlike you, I escaped. I escaped, and Yinsen didn’t. We’re survivors, Loki, and that’s what we do." He glanced up again, locking gazes with him.  "We survive. Damn if it isn’t hard sometimes. Harder than giving up. But everyone deserves a little help sometimes, Lo. Everyone.”

It was too much. Too much. Loki had done nothing, _nothing_ , to perpetuate this belief, to give any of these foolish mortals an inkling of the truth, the knowledge of his time with Thanos and The Other. He’d not spoken one word that would sway them, that would give away his deepest secrets, had woken biting his fist so hard it bled more times than he cared to remember, rather than shout his distress at night.

And this mortal, this pathetic mortal with his machines and inventions and the  lifespan of an ant, who had met Loki in the worst of times, had never known him before the fall, before when he was younger and happier and almost even innocent in his love for his family—that he would guess, that he could know, that he saw through the cover of anger and sarcasm and hurt that Loki hid behind, that he saw—

Loki’s arms shook, and his ribs ached, bruised in the center as though Thor had left his hammer resting against Loki’s chest again, and his lungs burned with each breath.

Suddenly there was pressure along his shoulders, an arm, warm and inviting and comfortable.

Loki found his voice.

He screamed.

He screamed his rage, his anger. His anguish. He screamed and screamed until the tears flowed like torrents from his face, dripping and wet from his chin, and he screamed more, until his voice was raw and bitter and it hurt to breath.

And all the while, Stark sat beside him, an arm protectively around the god’s shoulder as he rubbed small, comforting circles and whispered, over and over again. “It’s alright. Let it go. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.”_

It was like falling.

He remembered the black, the deepness of the depths of space that felt as though everything had been removed, destroyed, miniaturized into the tiniest non-existent pieces, like he’d been taken apart at an atomic level before he was reborn and remade into the sword of Thanos.

One moment, he was screaming with the strange mortal comforting him. Then, he woke up again and the room had changed. His clothing felt strange, alien and too big, and the thin cords were still around his wrists, powerful and invisible and intertwined with his magic. Temporarily, Stark had said. His magic would be restored eventually.

Loki had heard that before.

There were a few centuries in his youth when Odin had bound the young god’s magic as punishment for Loki’s tricks, for his reliance on a woman’s art. Instead, Loki learned to fight with a staff and throwing knives, and to duck when Thor attacked him, to avoid the blows as best he could, in his smaller, lithe form.

And his tongue grew wicked and cold.

Loki learned his truest weapon then, a harsh word and a silver-twisted manipulation. Twist and pull and turn and spiral down, down, down, down to the ground.

And here he was, on the floor of his cell, with the strange Midgardian keying open the door again.

“Lokes!” Stark called as he hustled across the floor. “I’m busting you out of this joint! Here, put these on, it’s really bright outside.”

Humans wore the strangest things, Loki decided. A set of brightly colored frames with dark lenses fitted over Stark’s eyes, and he had brought Loki a pair, along with an oddly shaped object that the mortal claimed was a hat.

Loki suppressed the shudder as he donned the items. Stark stood with Rogers at the open door to Loki’s cell; the Captain looked anxious and distinctly uncomfortable as the soldier shifted from foot to foot, hands in the pockets of pleated blue trousers. Loki thought he looked rather amusing, as though the Captain had sucked down an unripe fruit too quickly and didn’t know how to accommodate the bitter aftertaste remaining.

“See you back at the tower, then?” Stark nodded to Rogers as he took Loki’s elbow.

“Uh. I suppose I’ll catch a ride with Romanov.”

“Thanks Cap, knew you would understand!” Stark dragged Loki out of the room, past the SHIELD operatives wearing their guns like badges of honor, past the snarling face of Fury as Stark saluted the one-eyed man in the most casual way.

Outside, into the sunshine.

Loki squinted behind the dark lenses, careful to avoid stumbling on his weakened limbs as he followed Stark, as the genius pushed him into a seat and reached across Loki’s limp form to buckle the god into the car seat (as though he were fragile, mortal and weak).

He _was_ fragile. Mortal. And weak.

It was a short, blessedly quiet ride, and Loki spent the time observing the busy pace of the city around them. Everywhere he looked he could see signs of the Chitauri attack, sometimes just in the shape of the construction, where a gaping maw on the side of the building gave the impression that a Midgardian transport vehicle had been lifted from the ground and driven through the upper floors. There were makeshift shrines, with two-dimensional images of what Loki could only assume were deceased Midgardians, surrounded by flowers and candles and, sometimes, debris from the battle that had been shoved to the side.  

And thousands upon thousands of humans going about their daily lives, humans in orange and yellow vests and hats and wielding heavy machinery and cranes as they undid the damage Loki had wrought upon this realm, oblivious that the cause for this destruction rode through their city at the side of one of its more famous residents.

Loki wondered at the fierce ache in his side, if this is what guilt felt like.

The tower looked different now, from this angle at the street below. Loki couldn’t look at the landing platform for longer than a moment before bile rose and he had to turn his eyes away. Its shape was different, rounded; no longer a jagged line across the skyline.

“This way Bambi,” Stark said.

And Loki followed the mortal, not caring where his feet took him.

The penthouse too was different (and Loki wondered at how everything had changed in such a short time on Midgard, how the city had moved on, how the people poured forth and continued their lives as though nothing had ever changed their daily routine).

The penthouse floor was less open than before, with additional spaces carved out and a narrow stairway leading to the second floor. The floor-to-ceiling windows felt bigger than Loki remembered, without the weight of the portal hanging above them. There were two elevators now, one that Stark said was their personal elevator (for Loki would be required to live on the same floor as Stark for the time being), and the second that went to the floors where the other Avengers lived. Loki had flinched when Stark mentioned the second elevator, even though Stark had hurried to reassure him that the others could not enter Stark’s penthouse floor without his presence; he’d forgotten that the other Avengers had moved in, too, to look after Loki.

And Stark left him there, in his rooms within the penthouse, to settle himself in.  He had a room with a large bed—the mattress was too comfortable for Loki’s taste—an attached en suite and an empty closet that stretched from wall to wall with empty custom wood shelving.

Loki sat in the corner of his room, against the windows that were ubiquitous in every wall of the penthouse. The city moved like ants at play beneath him, and he watched the world pass him by.

It was cold inside, colder than he remembered Midgard to be in the past. The sun was a fierce beacon against the penthouse windows, however, bright and warm; Loki curled up like a cat in his own personal sunbeam, pulling his legs to his chest as he let his chin fall to his knees.

And he sat there in the sunbeam, until the sun set and the sky darkened outside and his shoulders shook with fear, his gut clenched in tight knots as the city lit up below him, in yellows and whites and greens and reds as the puny mortals went about their lives like ants before a magnifying glass is retrieved and angled just so—

He wasn’t a sword, not any more. But what use is a dried-up weapon to Midgard?

The sun rose again in the windows and Loki blinked at the brilliance, the white light against the horizon that reached just high enough over the edge of the platform to blind Loki momentarily.

“Sir is asking if you would please eat the plate he has left for you, Mr. Odinson.”

“Don’t call me that.” Loki snapped, his lips clumsily moving for the first time in what felt like weeks. His jaw ached at the sudden movement, and he remembered feeling this sore before, when The Other had—

Loki gasped as the memory threatened to overwhelm him, and somewhere far away he heard Stark’s AI calling his name, then the floor vibrated as footsteps fell in quick taps to his side. There was a warm hand on his shoulders, careful to avoid the icy-blue poison creeping up Loki’s arms, and a voice saying his name.

And Loki calmed himself, but he didn’t move.

Eventually, Stark went away on his own.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, like that; he only knew that at some point his back started throbbing where wall of glass dug into the knobs of his spine, that his thighs were burning with the effort of holding holding himself tightly tucked into the corner and he couldn't feel his legs anymore, that his forehead had been pressed so long to the window that it burned and froze him as the sun rose and set again.

Loki forgot to move for so long that, when Stark appeared in the doorway with his suit on, the god could have sworn he shook free a layer of dust when he turned his head to stare at the strange mortal.

“Listen buddy, last call," Stark said, the armor's faceplate grim and forbidding. "You gotta take a shower and eat something or Jarvis and I will stage an intervention." He paused. "Do you know what that is?”

“I presume it is when you intervene in something, Stark?” Loki’s voice was alien to his ears, full of grit and gravel. “Your presence is still unwelcomed, Ant. I thought you said these rooms were mine to do as I pleased.”

“Yeah, wrong answer, Bambi.” Stark hefted him up into the suit’s metal arms like a child’s toy.

Loki squeaked in protest but he couldn’t move in the mortal’s grasp.  “Unhand me, you pathetic oaf!” He cursed again as he tried to claw away the thin bands around his wrists, the bonds on his seidr and strength and everything that made him _Loki_.

“Pathetic oaf? See that right there is proof that you need this intervention, Lokes. I’m actually insulted that you thought that would be insulting.” Stark stepped through the door to Loki’s en suite and walked into the shower, drenching the god in warm water, clothes and all.

Stark stood there in the shower with Loki until the god began shouting obscenities at him, until Loki’s fists gave up their beating rhythm against Stark’s metal armor. And he didn't drop the god, either, but instead propped him up against the shower wall and, with surprisingly gentle armored fingers, washed Loki’s hair. Then, the genius wiped the tears that had fallen from the god’s surprised eyes, and helped the weakened god out of the sopping wet garments.

It wasn’t pity, in the mortal’s eyes, when the faceplate lifted.

It wasn’t pity, and Loki could never repay Stark, could never make it up to the strange man. He knew that the moment their eyes met. 

And Loki was weak.

Weak, pathetic, and _mortal_ , and apparently his new form needed sustenance every few hours or it would waste away. Loki was so cold and exhausted that Stark had to help him dress and had to help him to the couch. The trickster managed to eat the soup that Stark had Dummy prepare, though the mug shook in his hands so forcefully that Stark had to help him with the first few sips. It was warm, and the salty flavor surprised Loki, before he took another sip, and another.

It was the first time in weeks when Loki thought he might get through this day, that when the sun set it wouldn’t freeze him to the core.

Later, Loki found himself tucked against Stark’s shoulder on the strange Midgardian’s couch, with yet another movie—that the shorter man proclaimed to be a classic from Earth that Loki couldn’t miss—playing across the display. He didn’t remember the movie, but he could still feel the imprint of Stark’s leg against his, the warmth from where their shoulders touched, like a brand-new bruise, hot and inflamed.

And Stark stayed with him.

He spent the next few days waking Loki to eat, carrying the god into the shower when Loki refused to move, and sitting with him in the lounge as the mortal fiddled away at one of his thin tablets and Loki—

He didn’t know what he was, any more.

He wasn’t a sword.

But if he was not a weapon, and he was not an Aesir, and he was no longer the All-Father’s hidden relic, not Thor’s younger brother, not a Prince, not even the scourge of the Earth he had once tried to invade, what was he?

He breathed in and out.

Stark smiled at him, when he glanced up from his tablet to find the god staring. His fingers were always gentle against Loki’s scalp as he helped the god wash the suds from his greasy black hair. And Loki woke screaming to his soothing voice letting him know he wasn’t alone.

Loki remembered those eyes, from behind the faceplate. Stark _understood_. Loki didn’t know why, but the genius understood.

So Loki existed. And that was enough.

* * *

“Hey Loki, ever heard of a bucket list?”

“No?”

“Well it’s not really a bucket list because that’s kinda what we’re trying to avoid, y’know?" Stark fiddled with something in his hands, a slim piece of tech that Loki had seen the mortal reading from earlier. "More like a list of reasons to live, you know, things to try while on Earth.,”

“Go away already, Stark. You are _boring_ me,” Loki mumbled without heat.

“I think you should try it, Lo-Kitty. Just go down the list. One thing at a time, you know?”

Stark handed Loki the tablet before the genius retreated to his workshop for the first time in weeks, leaving Loki behind, and Loki stood for a long while, staring at the sky, a faint orange and yellow creeping across the horizon.

His fingers skimmed across the buttons of the tablet and the screen lit up, and Loki glanced at the title. _Reasons to stay alive_ , it proclaimed. As though everything wrong with Loki’s world could be resolved by the production of a Midgardian list of reasons why these wretched mortals would choose to extend their already short lives. And that Stark could think that such a list would—Loki rolled his eyes at the first item on the list.

One word: _Recovery_.  

Loki turned, his boots clicking in frustrated, quick movements as he crossed the room.

Behind him, the sun rose.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I am looking for friends. What does that mean—tame?”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“To establish ties?”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…”_

He woke in Odin’s bedchamber, the silk sheets so smooth against his skin that he almost thought he was walking a thread again—before he remembered.

He remembered and groaned and hid his face in his hands, willing his shoulders not to shake.

It had been months since he'd woken trembling and with ice-cold fingers from that last thread, shamefaced as he remembered the gentle touches of a mortal that hated him, the terribly embarrassing comfort as he screamed, as he grieved for his younger self. As Stark held him.

And—oh!—how he wanted to scream now.

Unlike the other strands he’d glimpsed, that thread had been longer, and even after, in that perfect moment when Stark had cut Loki to the core, danced in his secrets and bathed them in light, Loki saw what was to come in the strands that had never been woven but were left raw and unfinished, abandoned.

And before he woke, Loki saw the glimpses of what had been woven further and further away; brief, hurried impressions. Frigga must have _known_ she wouldn’t have more time to show him the strands of fate, so she’d given him a glimpse. A taste that ached and teased and tormented the god. Someone had spent a long time weaving those patterns, hoping and praying to the Fates to direct his path along that tapestry; direct him into the arms and under the protection of that strange mortal.

The Loki from the final thread had broken completely; his soul had fractured into pieces so tiny that Loki didn’t know if they’d ever be found. And Stark had said to his other self, as though it was the simplest thing in the world, that one day, someone was going to hug him so tightly that all his broken pieces would stick back together again. Then the mortal had laughed and shrugged his shoulders, blew it off as something sentimental his mother once said, that it was silly, a foolish notion.

But Loki remembered.

There were moments of calm, of rage, of acceptance, and of love. So much love. And Loki saw all of this as patterns across his eyelids, memories and moments and hopes and dreams that had faded into nothingness when he'd woken that morning again in his cell on Asgard. And in those fleeting, frantic moments, Stark had begun putting the pieces together again and Loki burned with jealousy for _himself_ , envious and spiteful for the affections for another version of him, a construct of Frigga’s weavings that would never actually exist, that he would never experience, would never see—

Frigga had died that very afternoon.  

Loki’s nights were ruled by dark and terrible things, filled with his torments and screams and so much pain. At first, Loki had cried and screamed and begged Frigga to return the visions, cursed her for taking away the torments of seeing the strange mortal in his not-dreams, cursed how much he’d come to look forward to the respite from his nightmares, a gift that he’d thought she had ripped away like a dried bandage across a gaping wound, and now.... Now he bled bright red across the floor of his mind, poisonous black stains festering in the remnants of the hooks within his mind.

For no one came running but to mock, when the former prince screamed in his nightly terrors, when he screamed and tossed and fell to the floor of his cell, twisted and bloodied and panicked, remembering all that happened, remembering what The Other had done, violated and hurt and twisted, and broken, broken, broken, in vivid yellows and blues.

And then, when the messenger finally arrived to inform Loki that Frigga had died in the attack on the dungeons, that the dreams had stopped because—the god’s rage had been absolute. He’d destroyed everything he could touch, every furnishing and book and possession she had smuggled into his little corner of Asgard, every written note and sound that reminded the god of upturned ink bottles, of the tap-tap-tap of her heels across the stonework, of her kindness even when she refused to acknowledge his grief painted over his anger with a carefully placed brush of apathy to his anguish.

A knock sounded on the chamber door, and Loki let the illusion bleed over his form, remaking himself in the image of the All-Father.

It was almost three months now, since Loki had hidden away the All-Father’s body, locked deep in Odin-Sleep, and sent Thor with his not-blessing to Midgard.

To the realm within which that Stark resided.

But Loki wasn’t thinking of that, not today.

Today, the delegation from Álfheimr and Vanaheimr would arrive to discuss stabilizing the Nine Realms, commencing negotiations to return the stolen relics that the All-Father had now shown he wasn’t capable of protecting alone on Asgard.

And tomorrow, Odin would greet the delegation from Jötunheimr to accept the allegiance of their new king, and offering his own promises in return that his errant sons, who had both in acts of madness sought to destroy the frozen realm, had well and truly been dealt with.

Loki in Odin’s form rose as a worker entered to stoke the fires, and others came to draw the All-Father’s baths. The first few weeks in this form had been trying, when Loki couldn’t stomach the touch of others and had to force himself to hold still as the servants dressed him, bathed him, touched him in the same careful movements that Loki had grown up with but had long since ceased to expect performed.  Not since Loki was a mere five centuries old had servants helped him bathe or dress, ever since Loki’s seidr had developed, along with the trickster’s penchant for hiding snakes in the water or dressing gowns to startle those servants who spoke less kindly about the younger prince’s abilities.

Odin’s form hid Loki’s scars—ugly pale lines across his flesh that were smooth to the touch, but that no amount of seidr could remove. At night, Loki would stroke the lines that crossed his chest and thighs and arms, just feeling the smoother surface against his skin, proof that the nightmares were real. That he had survived, even if no one knew, even if no one saw him. Even if Thor and Frigga had believed him a monster to the very end.

But the ‘All-Father’ had nightmares now, and it was no stretch for Loki to claim when woken that he had dreamed of Frigga’s death.

The people were restless. Their king appeared a broken man, more broken than Loki knew the real Odin would ever have been. Odin was a warrior first, more than anything else; he would grieve the set number of days and move on. In fact, the delegation from Vanaheimr had brought several prospective wives for Odin to consider, now that their oldest treaty had died in Asgard.

Loki bit back a scowl as another worker came to prepare his baths.

Learning that Frigga, that his _mother_ , had been another relic taken from her realm, had been horrifying. He wondered if Thor knew that his mother had been stolen, secreted away because the All-Father had a fancy.

“Was your sleep troubled, All-Father?” a brisk voice rang.

Loki grunted, shaking his head once towards Sorin, Odin’s oldest advisor and secretary ever since Mimir’s head had finally ceased responding to its charms.

“I am pleased, then,” the whippet-thin man continued. “Perhaps you will be more earnestly inclined with a good night’s rest to consider the proposal from Vanaheimr then? They are most eager for a match to be made.”

“I will not,” Loki answered, perfectly imitating Odin’s tone. “Please convey to them that my goodwill continues to extend, in honor of my late wife.”

The thought of having to take a lover in the form of the man that Loki had called father, had loved and detested in equal measure, made Loki’s stomach turn.

The man coughed delicately. “I understand. But the people are nervous, with the heir-apparent no longer in Asgard and the second son turned traitor and dead. Without another, Asgard’s succession is viewed weak by other realms.”

It wasn’t just 'other realms,' Loki knew. It was Svartálfaheimr, as usual, seeking to cause troubles for the others now that Asgard’s great king had been attacked from within Asgard’s very walls.

“Thor will return before then,” Loki answered in Odin’s confident tone. “I am old, but not _that_ old, Sorin.”

“Yes, All-Father.”

Thor had returned but once to Asgard since Loki had taken Odin’s form, and it had been all too easy to dissuade him from staying. A few quiet pushes and he had once again departed, happy to while away his time in Midgard with the mortal, Jane.

It was disgusting, and would make Loki sick if he wasn’t already so terribly jealous.

* * *

The talks lasted the better part of the day. Boorish, but at least the Vanir had agreed to put off discussions about Odin’s next wife, thank the Norns, and both realms had sworn to uphold Asgard and protect the golden kingdom, as well as Midgard, when the time came. From Midgard, Odin had argued to the Vanir delegation, Thanos would be well positioned to attack the other realms with Midgard’s vast resources and its empty, defenseless space.

Not to mention what The Other could do to the humans, transforming them into mutated demons with lives no longer but claws and teeth and death to offer the other realms, like the Chitauri—who hadn’t been monstrosities before, but people, with legs and arms and lives and an understanding for advanced mechanics and intergalactic exploration—before The Other had sold them to Thanos.

Asgard’s vault would be next after Midgard, unless Loki strengthened its forces and moved the most dangerous of objects into safer hands, hands further out on the branches of Yggdrasil with allies who would defend Midgard and protect its heroes, too, in exchange.

After the treaties had concluded ( _Without a new wife, the Norns are to be praised_ , Loki thought), the feast that followed felt more like a funereal send-off than a celebration.

The Vanir delegation had fought hard for its treasures, and there was much that Loki would willingly sacrifice to stop the Mad Titan’s march through the heavens, but even so, both the Vanir and the Álfheimr delegation had committed to their support.

That Odin’s vault was a few relics lighter by the end of the day was of no concern to Loki. Why should Asgard hoard everything, sitting high in the branches and hoping that the fire at its roots will bring down the tree? Odin was a fool to believe the lower branches and roots, the trunk in which Midgard resided, did not concern Asgard.

For what the Mad Titan could do to the roots as he climbed through the trunk of Yggsdrasil would destroy them all.

Loki huffed an amused laugh under his breath, twirling his fingers down the side of his beer stein, before seizing the mug in a firm grip.

When he faked his death in Thor’s arms, Loki thought he would run. Thought he’d seek the deepest, darkest parts of the galaxy, hide amongst the anonymous faces of Knowhere, using his seidr to conceal his face and name. But there wasn’t a place in the Nine Realms that was safe from Thanos, nowhere that the Mad Titan couldn’t find him. Even Asgard,  so far up the branches of Yggsdrasil, offered him only the barest of protections. But he knew; he had always known what Thanos intended, even when he agreed to bring him the Tesseract.

Bloodied and broken and more dead than alive, Loki knew.

The last thread he saw before Frigga’s death had left him weary and longing for the comforting touch of a man he barely knew.

“More drink, All-Father?” a portly, balding servant simpered.

Loki wanted to let his smirk ride across his face. He recognized this one; the man had laughed at Thor’s ill-timed jest about Loki’s seidr on the morning of Thor’s coronation. Loki had made snakes slither down the man’s arm, across the serving tray. What the god would give to make the man suffer, to watch him screech and simper as he realized that his _king_ was not who he thought, before extracting his revenge—

He waved the man away.

Much had changed since that fateful day, when the Frost Giants had walked the pathway Loki had shown them into the vaults. Loki had delayed Thor’s coronation, yes, but at _such_ a price.

His fingers drummed on the chair, and Loki worked to still his movements. He remembered his first introduction to court; bored and anxious, his fingers had  drummed against the gold-green of his armor before Frigga found his hand and tucked her arm into his,  whispering court gossip in Loki’s ear.

Without the All-Mother’s presence—without her visage to smooth the pathways, to mingle and mix with the visitors and Aesir guests alike—diplomatic feasts had turned awkward .

Madness, all of it.

* * *

Later, after the feast ended and his guests had scattered for their chambers and the servants had been sent away, Odin’s form long disrobed, Loki forced his skin to return to its normal pallor. As Odin’s form fell away in a flash of poison-green, Loki’s tangled black hair cascading down his shoulders, he let himself remember.

She had said: “You are always so perceptive about everyone but yourself,” and Loki hated her for it now, hated that she knew what was coming but did not save herself. That she saved Thor’s wretched mortal woman instead, that she didn’t leave her own illusion for the Kurse to find, that let herself die for no reason so that Loki might live.

She knew, Loki thought as he climbed into his bed. She knew when she cursed him to see the threads, that Loki would find those where that mortal’s thread tangled with his. That Loki would over and over feel that kindness through his not-dreams that felt too real and left him sweating and cursing and sobbing at the agony of knowing he could _never_ have that, never see the mortal again.

Never loved.

As Loki curled on his side, his hands burrowed against his ears and pulling at the too-long black hair, he closed his eyes and wished for something as sweet as Frigga’s curse; wished to walk the threads again and to see those where his pathways crossed with the strange mortal.

Anything would be kinder than the nightmares that awaited.

As he drifted off to face what may come, Loki thought that when things were settled, when the treaties were completed and war imminent, maybe, just maybe, he would go to Midgard to warn them. He would find Thor, and if it were anything like the last thread he walked, he would live with his shield-brothers in Stark’s Tower.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d see Stark there, too.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."_

Odin All-Father arrived late one afternoon at Central Park in a flurry of  rainbow lights, at almost the exact spot from which his sons had departed years ago. Sporting Gungnir and his ceremonial armor and helmet, he walked up to the first Midgardian transport vehicle he saw. Inside, a man sat chewing on what appeared to be two pieces of bread with something between the layers.

“Take me to Stark Tower, mortal,” the god said, and the driver blinked before his eyes traveled the length of Odin’s form, trailing over the golden armor. The god waited impassively as the driver took another bite.

“Off duty,” the man finally said, finishing his bite and pointing to the white oblong object that rested on top of the vehicle.

Odin blinked. “Off duty? Do you mean to imply that you may rest from your transport duties at any time, peasant?”

“Man, who ya’ callin’ a peasant? I’m from Brooklyn!” the man shouted, standing to his full height.  

“Are you lost or are you actually from Asgard?" Stark’s metallic voice rang out.

Odin spun to see Stark’s fire-red armor hovering behind him.

"Cause Halloween’s not for another few months, buddy,” Stark continued flippantly, hovering next to him.  

“Man of Iron, you are a shield-brother of my son Thor. Take me to him,” Odin demanded.

“Thor’s not here, All-Daddy,” Stark said, before dropping to the ground. The faceplate slipped up, revealing a careworn grin on the mortal. “He lives in London with his girl. Though he will probably be over as soon as this makes the news. It’s not every day that royalty arrives in Central Park on a rainbow. Don’t suppose you hid a pot of gold too?”

Odin’s brow furrowed. “Why would I hide gold on Midgard?”

The mortal visibly bit back a smirk. “Never mind, you’re too tall anyway.”

“Of course I’m tall,” Odin growled, before shaking his head. “Enough of this farce. I was under the impression that you and the other Midgardians known as the Avengers were Thor’s shield-brothers,” he boomed. “Why would he not then live in your tower?”

Stark laughed, but it was a hesitant sound and didn’t reach his eyes. “My tower? Why _would_ he live there?”

Odin waved a hand dismissively. “It’s of no importance, I suppose. I have urgent matters to discuss with Midgard’s leaders.  SHIELD, is it?”

“Nope,” Stark said, making his lips pop with the ‘p’. “Not anymore. SHIELD’s gone.” He twirled his fingers in the air impatiently. “Long story. Tell you what, All-Daddy. Why don’t you come back to the Tower and we’ll call Thor? Get out of the park, before the paparazzi show up?”

“The what?”

“Never mind. Don’t suppose you can fly like Thor? No? Alright then, we’ll do this the Earthling way.” Stark waved towards the yellow transport vehicle and the man who had so rudely refused to ferry Odin to Stark tower. He scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it, along with a pile of green bills, over to the man.

The god stared fixedly at where Stark's hand casually touched the man’s shoulder.

The rude mortal nodded, and the one clad in garish red-and-gold armor turned his attention back to Odin. “Take this thy yellow chariot to my Tower, All-Daddy, and I’ll fly ahead and meet thee there.  Okay?”

“Fine,” Odin grunted, glaring at the man for daring to address him so familiarly.  He used  Gungnir to lower his form stiffly into the Midgardian vehicle, and had to close the door twice before it shut correctly.

The bowels of the vehicle  smelled of piss and leather. The man behind the Plexiglas layer had a whiff of spice to him, and reeked strongly of fear as he got the metallic beast rumbling into the streets.

Humans were everywhere, outside the vehicle’s windows. There were short ones, fat ones, muscular ones, weak ones, young ones, and very old ones scurrying about, dressed in the strangest of garments, as though humans were both blind to colors and function, as oblivious about their forms as any of the Vanir, and worse.

But no one was training for battle; the god saw no practice fields, no youth sparring with swords or spears or knives, just cement and buildings and thousands upon thousands of ants scurrying about in their lives, as though nothing mattered and nothing would ever change.

The streets were filled with transport vehicles, bigger and smaller that the yellow chariot, as Stark had called this construct that the god rode in, darting this way and that, and in so many colors, so loud and vibrant and poignant.

Beneath Odin’s form, hidden by the waves of seidr, Loki was overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the potent city, so obviously and painfully human. He recalled all too well the last time he’d visited this city, his vision awash in a blue haze until the green behemoth had smashed him into the floor of the penthouse.

Then time blurred, and Loki had to struggle to remember which memories were threads he walked through at night and what truly happened.

He remembered the smells on the walk from the transport vehicle to the park where Thor dragged him home in chains, his mouth covered with that hideous travesty of a gag. Stark had shown up with a silver case, but he didn’t save Loki. That thread had ended, long ago.

This Stark was different, was not the one who held him. Would never care for him.

(Loki would have to remember that.)

Another mortal passed close beside yellow chariot, and 'Odin' flinched, surprised. The man had metal shapes slotted through his nose and ears, and colorful lines and patterns sketched from his wrists up to where they disappeared under the mortal's tunic as he moved next to the window, Loki thought he saw a flicker of metal in the man’s lip. He studied the flash of metal and movement, fascinated, watching as the mortal wove between the larger vehicles on only a two-wheeled contraption, balanced precariously on two small platforms that moved in a circular pattern.

And to think Loki had spent the better part of half a year planning for the protection of this realm, instead of running further and further into the depths of Yggdrasil, when its in habitants decorated themselves with metal spikes like on Álfheimr.

* * *

 

The transport stopped, and Odin found Stark waiting for him beside the vehicle, now clad casually in jeans and a dark shirt, the red metal suit abandoned.  

“This way, your highness,” the mortal gestured, and escorted Loki in Odin’s form inside.

Odin followed the genius through a series of twists and turns until they reached a small elevator that opened as Stark approached and moved only after Stark had touched his thumb to the edges of a discretely placed panel.

After a moment, the doors opened in Stark’s penthouse, and Odin followed Stark inside.

The mortal went straight for the bar, calling as he went, “Jarvis, is the Mark 42 in place?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And you cleared my calendar?” Stark continued, still addressing nothing but the air in front of him, though his eyes were strangely fixed upon Odin's face.

“Your next appointment is not until tomorrow morning," the construct replied, "and I have notified Ms. Potts that you will be otherwise engaged this afternoon.”

“Good. What about coverage of the park? Anyone picking it up?” Stark poured amber–colored liquid over ice into two glasses.

“Only a handful of media sites presently; I have implemented our protocols as instructed.”

“Awesome. Knew I loved you for a reason. One more thing. Tell Hill I may have something of interest to discuss later, but I’m not ready to share.”

“She’s going to be ever so thrilled, Sir.”

By this point, 'Odin' was close to tapping his foot on the floor, completely unamused at having been ignored in favor of banalities. He cleared his throat meaningfully.

Tony chuckled, and strolled over. “You like scotch, All-Daddy? This is the good stuff. Try some. I _absolutely_ insist.”

Odin accepted the glass and sniffed. It smelled suspiciously like the liquid he remembered drinking in one thread, when the scotch loosened the hooks of The Other’s control in his mind.

He took a cautious sip as he watched Stark take a mouthful from his own glass, then another. The liquid burned like he recalled from the dream, in a pleasant way. It was better savored, when he wasn’t sucking it down, hoping it would dismantle the hold of the hooks with each sip.

Stark’s shoulders relaxed with each sip Odin took, so the god took another, and another, until there was only mostly ice left in the glass.

Only then did Stark gesture to the couch. “Make yourself comfortable,” the genius grinned, and wagged his eyebrows before sitting across from the god, “And can I call you Daddy-O? All-Daddy’s kind of mouthful.”

“You may call me All-Father, or Odin All-Father, mortal,” the god grunted, taking care to move slower as he seated himself with the help of Gungnir.

“Still a mouthful. Takes too long and it makes me think I’m talking to someone cosplaying from the Bible or something. Well, Odin All-Father,” Tony sneered, and the title sounded like a well-placed joke. “What are you doing here?”

“I have urgent matters to discuss with Thor.” The god turned a one-eyed steely glare on the mortal. “Did you not say you would be able to contact him?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s the middle of the night over there.” Stark waved a hand. “Doesn’t Asgard have time zones?”

Stark took a gulp of his drink, and Loki noticed the mortal’s knee bouncing with nervous energy, as though the genius was thinking faster than his body could respond.

“Time zones?” the god said, the question ringing more like a statement in Odin’s regal tone.

Stark scowled; even hidden under Odin’s form, Loki felt exposed, as though the man before him was searching for the cracks in the façade, searching and pulling apart the foundation brick by brick.

Finally, the mortal exhaled. “You can cut the crap, Loki. I know it’s you.”

Odin blinked in surprise. He carefully placed his beverage on the low table in front of him and spoke, his voice betraying nothing. “Laufeyson is dead, Man of Iron. I would have thought Thor would have informed your realm of such welcome news.”

“Right. We’re really going to play this game, Rock of Ages?” Stark rolled his eyes, leaned back on the couch and reached for the scotch. “Rude. But let’s play. If you were Odin, why didn’t you have the rainbow bridge thing put you down where Thor is? I thought Asgard had some magic gatekeeper watching everyone like a scary, larger scale version of Santa at Christmas. But instead you show up here, in New York, at _almost_ the same place where we left you and Thor. That good enough? How about the fact that the All-Daddy doesn’t know what I look like, hmm? Even if you recognized the armor, you got out of the Taxi and walked right for me. Should I go on?”

Loki felt the blood drain from his already pale features beneath Odin’s image, and he clenched his fist tighter around Gungnir to hide how his fingers shook. He said nothing.

“But what I really want to know is—” Stark continued,  leaning forward, his brown eyes studying Loki in the All-Father’s image as though he were a specimen under a lens and if the mortal just turned his head in the right direction, he could see the truth, “—what the fuck that mind-skimming shit was, those endless weird dreams after you returned to Asgard? Did your little mind-control gizmo backfire when you tapped it against my chest?”

“Excuse me?” Loki did his best to affect an offended glare at the mortal.

“You heard me, Snowflake. Those dreams. A thousand and one scenarios of how things might have gone differently, by Loki Odinson. Or is it Laufeyson now?” Stark snapped. “And does thou brother know thou wearest his father?”

Impossible, Loki thought. _Impossible_. She couldn’t have—

“You—” Odin’s form coughed, “you saw—”

“A bunch of weird scenarios where you sometimes died to escape the purple lizard guy, or for whatever insanely weird reason my doppelganger saved your sorry ass? Or kissed you? Or both?” Stark made a face and shook his shoulders as though the image lodged within his brain burned. “Yeah. Saw all that. Made me lose Pepper. And now that you’re here, I want to know why. Why _me_?”

Loki let his head fall forward into his hands, vanishing Odin’s armor, and slowly let the illusion crumble. His hands shook with the effort it took to drop the illusion after so long, and he trembled, fearful of what Stark would do now. How could he have been so stupid, so foolish to think that Stark wouldn’t figure it out, to think that Stark—the mortal who had seen through his illusions, his tricks and schemes on behalf of The Other and Thanos, in more threads than not—wouldn’t see through just one more trick.

He was a fool. He was a _fool_. He _knew_ Frigga had done something more, something that would interfere with the tapestry, that would change his future, but he had been so certain that with her death any changes she had made had slipped away into the tapestry, gone forever.  She must have known then that she would—Loki bit back a sob, and his shoulders shook as he struggled.

“The dreams were the different threads, those not woven into the tapestry,” Loki whispered. “What could have been. I—I didn’t know anyone saw those besides me. What did she do, what—”

“Who?" Stark demanded. "What did _who_ do?”

“Frigga,” Loki bit back a sob. “My— My mother. She cursed me, said it was so I’d learn... punished for—for everything. For—" He cut himself off with clenched teeth. "But I swear, Stark. I did not know she shared those threads with anyone else. With you. How could she—”

He had to stop there, lest he keep embarrassing himself.

He expected the mortal to protest, to object to discovering that but for the small changes between threads—if the Norns had chosen differently, had the Fates been _kinder_ to Loki—then Stark might have saved Loki from himself. He waited for the genius’s protests that he’d _never_ save a monster such as Loki, but when, after a moment of silence, he dared look up, Stark stared impassively back, his brown eyes watching Loki as though the god were a new species discovered on the bottom of the inventor’s shoe.

“So, the visions were of alternative universes to ours?” Stark cleared his throat, impatient fingers drumming on the side of his tumbler. “Things that didn’t happen because a butterfly in South America didn’t flap its wings in a particular way?”

“It was a decision that was not made, not an alternative universe,” Loki clarified. “Other potential threads, other pathways that were woven and then discarded by the Fates. Things that never were, that could have been.”

“What does that even _mean_?" Stark exploded, shaking his head unconsiously. "The pathways were different, but everything else is—so the one where I kept the suit on and beat the crap out of you, that was real? And the one where you had a complete breakdown after SHIELD released you to the custody of the Avengers, and I had to carry you into the shower when you decided to try suicide by stagnation?" He paused, wide eyed as he stared long into the distance, his mind working at impossible speeds. "Everything before that—when I kept you on Earth because you wanted to die to escape big bad purple dinosaur guy? And he tortured you? That’s all real?"

“Thanos. The Mad Titan,” Loki grimaced, a bitter taste in his mouth.

“He’s real?” Stark held Loki's eyes as if he could read the truth or lie in them.

“Everything that happened before each of those threads began, also occurred here,” Loki swallowed. “To me.”

“Huh,” Stark murmured and broke the stare to pour them each another drink.

Loki cradled the tumbler to his chest, surprised to find he’d finished the last one.  He said nothing, awaiting Stark's scorn, which was sure to come.

Stark drank a good part of the contents of his glass. “Always wondered why you bothered putting that portal on my tower instead of the South Pole," he said at last, looking down into his drink. "I thought about asking if you were just that incompetent or really wanted to lose to mortals that badly. Might have asked too, if you hadn’t thrown me out the window first.”

“I’m sorry?” Loki offered, and Stark rolled his eyes. Loki tentatively sniffed at his drink again before he took another sip. It was warm and potent, and he looked over the rim of his glass around the room. The floors, the windows were pristine; all traces of when the green beast had smashed Loki through the tiles erased and cleared away.

“When the dreams ended—” Stark hesitated.

“Frigga was murdered,” Loki whispered.

“I know.” The inventor leaned back into the couch, letting his head drop to the cushions behind him as he cradled his drink. “I just thought, when the dreams ended, that it was when you died. When Thor came back, told us what happened, the timing was too much of a coincidence. So I figured you were dead. Until you showed up back here, on a rainbow and all, pretending to be the All-Daddy.”

“Oh,” Loki winced.

If this was to be his last memory of the tower, at least it was peaceful, Loki thought. Stark hadn’t thrown him out or shouted yet, or told Loki what a monster he truly was, that he was never worthy of saving, never worth it, no matter what happened in the very many threads the mortal must have seen. Loki grimaced, and his chest tightened in a vice-like gasp. He had to leave, had to leave before Stark spoke, before he could—

“This is stupid,” Stark grumbled.

Loki’s hands clenched the scotch glass so fiercely that he thought it might shatter.

“Because of those dreams," Stark continued before Loki could do anything, "I feel like I know you, like I should be asking how you’re doing or something. You sleeping okay? Still going blue at night? Need me to kiss a boo boo?”

Loki looked across the lounge, eyes wide with shock, to find Stark studying him, a faint grin ticked across the mortal’s face.

“No,” the young god replied after a moment, when he managed to remember himself. Stark was teasing him; that was all. It meant nothing. “And I believe I, ah, ‘went blue’ in that thread because of the restraints on my seidr, ah, those bands on my wrists. My seidr isn’t bound now.”

“Okay. But you _are_ still a Frost Giant though, in this reality, right?” Stark’s knee twitched nervously again, but he didn’t seem frightened.

Loki nodded.

“Neat," Stark grinned briefly. "We’ll have to see if I can detect your mumble-jumble mojo. I feel like there was one thread on that, pretty sure I have my research from that still. It will take me a bit to fabricate. What are you doing later tonight?”

“E-excuse me?” Loki stuttered again. “Aren’t your Avengers on their way? Haven’t you already had your sky servant contact Thor, to tell him that his ‘father’ Odin is a fraud?”

Stark blinked at Loki, confused. “Uh. No? Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m a monster, Stark. Because I killed your people!” Loki roared, suddenly angry, and his fists clenched in tight circles as he snarled at the genius, “Get on with it, Stark, you’ve figured it out, just _end_ this already! End _me_ already!”

Stark stood suddenly—

The god flinched violently, his knee catching the table and knocking his drink sideways. A small puddle splashed out the rim and across the coffee table.

Stark tsked. He rescued the glass with nimble fingers and moved to sit beside him on the couch.

The god startled at first, and then struggled to breathe when Stark’s knee touched his by accident, so warm and near. Up close, the genius smelled of scotch and motor oil; Stark’s scent was familiar and painful, and not _his_. But Loki’s mind had memories that were not real, that weren’t from this universe, and it ached, like one missed a limb or a vital organ when it was gone and wondered if it had ever been real at all.

“Whoa, easy there, Snowflake,” Stark said, casually twirling the last of the liquid in Loki’s glass, and bumped his knee against Loki’s. “Not gonna hurt you, Lo.”

Loki’s stomach roiled in uncomfortable knots, his cheeks burned with humiliation blossoming across his pale skin. Why was he letting this mortal affect him so?

“You know what? Fuck it.” Stark whispered the curse under his breath, as though he’d made an important decision, and chugged the last of Loki’s scotch.

A trembling hand reached for Loki’s arm, and the god willed himself not to flinch again, not to pull away even as his shoulders tensed, prepared for a blow that didn’t fall. A gentle weight settled around Loki’s shoulders, and he turned suspicious green eyes to study the mortal.

The man looked nervous too, like his arm had disobeyed him and he didn’t know what to do next.

“What in the Nines are you doing, Stark?” Loki tried for intimidating but his voice shook as badly as his shoulders.

“What does it look like?”

Loki panted in nervous gasps, his heart hammered so forcefully in his chest that he thought he’d explode, that it would explode again, like—

“Breathe, Snowflake,” Stark whispered in the god’s ear. “In, wait a second, now exhale. That’s better. Keep doing that.”

“What,” Loki whined as Stark rubbed small circles on his back, “What are you doing to me, ant?”

The chuckle was low and bitter. “Nothing. Touching you.”

Loki trembled again. “The _why_ am I—what is this, what have you—” A hand pressed across his chest, above his heart, gentle and warm. Loki whined at the contact and leaned involuntarily towards Stark.

The mortal sighed, hesitating only a split-second before quickly swinging a leg over Loki’s lap to straddle him. He leaned forward to wrap his arms around the god’s shoulders.

It was warm and gentle and Loki could feel the mortal's heartbeat through his ribs. Hot tears stung at his eyes, burning twin paths down his pale cheeks. “Stark—”

“Shut up, you idiot,” Stark muttered, burying his nose in Loki’s hair. “You think more than a year of living your alternate universe wet dreams every night didn’t affect me?" He huffed, and his warm breath tickled Loki's scalp. "I’d have to be a heartless bastard not to understand now. And I’m not. I’m _not_. Heartless, that is. Crude, arrogant, self-absorbed, and egotistical, yes. But not heartless. I just wish—” Stark’s own voice sounded pained, as though the words had been torn from his throat, “just wished you’d accepted that damn drink the first time.”

Loki felt his chest heave, a choked moan escaping past his lips, the warmth and strength and _everything_ , so much and so, so comfortable, and he couldn’t move but he should, he should, because this mortal was—this ant—who couldn’t live long enough to ever—and he wasn’t worth this, he was a monster, a murderer—

Stark’s arms loosened around Loki’s neck.

The god keened at the terrible loss of contact as Stark pulled away, but he couldn't do anything—

The mortal huffed the barest of chuckle and pulled Loki sideways on the couch, until the god was stretched out length-wise and Stark had half-draped himself across the god, with Loki’s head impossibly tucked against his shoulder, their limbs intertwined in every which way.

Loki’s chest rose and fell, and time moved across the windows with gentle touches; a hand that stroked his shoulders, another that found his hair and tangled in the too-long dark strands.

It was warm.

Warm and safe and, for the first time in forever, Loki didn’t think. He drifted in and out and away and in and just let himself float in this mysterious place, tucked against the weirdest mortal he’d ever encountered. And somewhere in the back of his mind he thought there was a curse for Frigga, for not telling him, but it was such a distant thought, so painfully far and yet near, that he couldn’t formulate the words to express it.

“Humans called this touch-starved,” Stark said finally, after Loki had lost track of how long he lay, shivering in the arms of the strange mortal, the man he knew in a hundred worlds but never in his own. “Noticed it in one of the last threads. The one where you became a comatose god in my tower after moving in? You remember that one?”

Loki whimpered in response. He still burned with shame over that one.

“Yeah, me too. Researched it after all the weird dreams ended, and now you’re telling me that the God of my dreams—no pun intended—is one and the same. Was a hunch, but—“ Stark tried to lift his arm from around Loki’s shoulders, and the god whined, “Yeah. I’m right.”

“I don’t understand,” Loki murmured. Stark had tangled himself so fully around the god that he didn’t know where he ended and Stark began any longer, but the point where the god’s forehead pressed into Stark’s neck, with Loki’s mouth and breath hot on the mortal’s collarbone, it felt right, as though he’d slept like this before, as though he’d been here before, cared for.

“I don’t either,” Stark said. “I remember those dreams. Lived them too, you know?  You spent years with that purple dinosaur guy, and another year alone in a cell in Asgard. And now the last, how long, half a year? More? Hiding in the form of someone else? That can’t be healthy. I know what that ugly alien guy did to you, from the dreams, you know?” Stark chuckled, a bitter, dark sound against Loki’s ears, “Hell, Lokes, I still have nightmares about _nightmares_ that aren’t mine. But I know what its like, to agree to something to survive. And I guess if the universe is gonna to give _me_ another chance, who am I to say someone else doesn’t deserve one, too?”

Loki’s fingers tangled in Stark’s shirt sleeve, gentle enough to not tear the fabric but firm, and he inhaled deeply. The scent was familiar, as though his mind remembered what his body could not, as though the threads he’d walked had been juxtapositioned across his memories. “You are insane.”

Stark laughed, the low rumble comforting beneath Loki’s cheek, as the genius’s shoulders shook with amusement.  “Yup.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.”_

It was later that evening, after Stark had his sky servant Jarvis order a meal, when the mortal had finally asked what urgent news Loki in Odin’s form had come to tell Thor, before the arrogant mortal had casually mentioned to Loki that SHIELD was no more.

And Loki had cursed and pushed himself away from the genius, shook his head to clear away his confusion, and snapped, “Stark, are you telling me that the only organization on Midgard that has regularly dealt with Thor and understood the threat posed by the Chitauri on Midgard, is no more?”

“Don’t you think you should be calling me Tony now, after that epic two hour cuddle session?” Stark had replied, and Loki would have wiped the smirk from the mortal’s face with a punch, if he hadn’t needed him so damn much.

But now, Loki hovered near Odin’s shoulder with his seidr waiting at the tips of his fingers as he watched the orange glow of Odin-sleep drift out from the elder god’s form. It had sounded easier to Loki, when he and Stark first came up with the idea, but waking Odin slowly from months of Odin-sleep was a difficult process.

It had almost been too easy to force Odin into sleep, injured and weak after the Dark Elves’ attack. Frigga had left one more gateway opened for Loki, one more thread in place to complete her tapestry.  

And he learned. He _always_ learned.

Loki didn’t expect redemption, not anymore. He knew that he would never measure up in Odin’s eyes. The golden Thor, his foolish not-brother that started a war with Jötunheimr because his vanity outstripped his intelligence, had, but not Loki.

Never Loki, the trickster, wielder of women’s magic, the skinny runt-brother to the mighty Thor. Loki, the one who learned to hide from his not-father’s wrath when his training exercises didn’t go as planned, when he lost a duel against someone younger in years, when his duel-master searched for him for lessons and found Loki practicing his seidr instead.

What is done is done. Loki exhaled. No use thinking of it any longer.

Odin rattled a harsh cough, and Loki moderated the energy fields around his frame, letting the soul forge’s field lapse.

“Frigga?” the old man sputtered, his voice hoarse with disuse. “Impossible.”

“Not quite, old man,” Loki said, his voice lilting ever so slightly with forced mirth.

“ _Loki_!” the All-Father hissed. “What have you done? Where is Thor?”

“Safe on Midgard,” Loki paced around Odin’s prone form. “He thinks you have sat on the throne of Asgard for the past half-year, though.” He tutted, his lips jutting in mock sorrow.

“Release me!” Odin roared.

“As do your people," Loki continued, "and the delegations from the other realms that I’ve negotiated with.” He leaned over to look into Odin’s good eye. “It would be a shame to undo all the work I’ve done, all the time I’ve spent creating a lasting peace amongst the realms. Creating a network of obligations, protecting Yggdrasil. _And_ Asgard.”

“You are nothing but an arrogant child,” Odin growled.

Loki almost laughed at the image of the All-Father, half a year’s growth to his beard and hair, threatening Loki.  “Maybe,” he acknowledged. “But I’ve done more to protect the realms from the Mad Titan in half a year than you’ve ever done in _five_ _hundred_ years. You must know what he is after, Odin.”

“You arrogant boy, you know nothing!” Odin twisted in the fading orange bonds that still contained his form, “Midgard’s the gateway, but if Thanos destroys that realm, it will take him too and seal the gateway forever. The rest of the Nine will be protected, they will be safe.”

“You’d sacrifice them,” Loki scowled. “You imprisoned me, threw me away without a trial, without even _deigning_ to ask where I’d been; believing that I’d _led_ the Mad Titan’s forces to Midgard by choice, but you care not to protect the realm? Why?”

The old man grunted. “There is no other way. Asgard alone cannot defeat the Mad Titan, and the other realms will not join in defending Midgard. The realm is not important enough to protect, and sacrificing the few will preserve the other eight higher realms.”

“Since when did the great _King_ of Asgard abandon one of the Nine under his watch? Under his protection? _Oh_!” Loki feigned surprise, his mouth falling open as his vibrant green eyes widened, “Why would the All-Father protect a realm of mortals, if he’d willingly abandoned his _son_ to Thanos? You knew, didn’t you, _Father_? You _knew_ where I landed?”

“Of course I knew,” Odin scowled as he struggled to sit up. “But it mattered not. You were already a traitor to Asgard, and you already knew—” Odin’s lips snapped shut, and the elderly god grunted.

“Knew what?” Loki hissed, “That I was a Frost Giant? That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it. It wasn’t worth _saving_ me from the Mad Titan, because I was no longer of _use_ to Asgard. Just like Midgard, now. You’d destroy that realm, to protect the other eight from the Mad Titan. Old man, did you not hear me, your son Thor is on Midgard!”

“Then let him die too!” Odin shouted, straining against the orange glow that tethered him to the soul forge. “ _Let him_! He brought that cursed mortal to Asgard, she who had touched the Aether. Like a foolish baby with an adder in its grasp, heedless to the shouts from those wiser than her as she picks it up! She is the reason Frigga died, and Thor brought her to Asgard! He _brought her here_!”

Loki backed away, surprise and grief etched in his features. That Odin could blame Thor for Frigga’s death, when Frigga had—when Loki—Loki turned away from the elder god, Gungnir vibrating with rage in his hands.  He should kill him, he should kill him. He could feel how Gungnir rang with thoughts of justice and what was fair, the elven metal heavy in Loki’s hands, whispering poisonous thoughts of revenge.

To teach Odin a lesson in civility, in justice, how could he—how could he—how could he have abandoned them all—

But he’d made a promise to Tony.

 _Damn_.

The last vestiges of the orange magic dissipated, and Loki cast the barest of holds across Odin, restraining him.

“Release me, and I’ll let you live, Laufeyson!”

“You are much less sane than I had hoped for, old man,” Loki whispered. He ignored Odin’s insults as he used Gungnir to sketch out a circle of runes across the floor, before whispering a spell as he crossed out the circle and started on a second pattern.

“You’ll pay for this, boy! You should have died—”

“Yes,” Loki snapped through clenched teeth, “I _should_ have died at the temple on Jötunheimr as a babe! I _should_ have died at the hands of the Frost Giants, when Thor invaded the realm! I _should_ have died in the care of Thanos. I should have died on Midgard, or for Midgard, or _a thousand other times_ in my life. But I _didn’t_ ,” he shouted, the air vibrated with the sound and Loki realized his hands were shaking, his magic pulsing in with a furious beat across his palms. “And now my life is my own. I’m not your relic, not your war prize! Not yours to control, you old fool.”

“What do you want?” Odin grunted, pushing against the invisible bonds.

“What I wanted no longer matters,” Loki grunted. “To be Thor’s equal? We have both been equally discarded by the man who raised us. Worthless now.”

Once he’d completed the spell-circle five times, he shoved his foot through the dust, scattering the patterns and sending up a cloud of gray-green seidr dust across Odin’s form. The grime clouded around Odin’s body, coating the elder Aesir before it flashed once and sunk beneath the All-Father’s skin. Loki casually slung Gungnir in the crook of his arm to his hand and back, the spear loyal and willing still even though its old master sat nearby.

“What—what have you done?” Odin coughed, spitting dust.

“What have _I_ done?” Loki allowed himself to smirk as he glared at the All-Father, now father of no-one. “Merely a variation of the spell placed on my soul by Thanos. Except this one will not allow your tongue to twist my deeds any longer. Now if you will excuse me, _Father_ , apparently I have a realm to save.”

“You cannot save M—Mi—” Odin’s eyes widened, “I will not allow—”

Loki watched him choke on his words, truly grinning this time. “Do you like it, _Father_? It’s a guise, you see. You cannot speak ill of Midgard, nor of its defense. After all, the treaties have all been signed, messengers already dispatched to Vanaheimr and Álfheimr, and arrangements are in the works with Midgard. All you must do now is sit on the throne and _pray_ Thor and Gungnir forgive you for your treachery to the Nine, as I doubt that the Fates _ever_ will.”

Odin flinched, and Loki threw the spear to the ground. The surroundings shifted in a flash of green, transforming from the damp, dusty cave Loki had portrayed into a seldom-used private sitting area directly connected to Odin’s study. Loki let himself chuckle as he watched surprise flit across Odin’s features, followed shortly by the elder god’s astonishment and rage.

“Welcome back, All-Father. May your rule be short,” Loki spat, before the Trickster’s illusion disappeared as Odin’s own seidr roared forth.

* * *

Stark was waiting by the penthouse elevator when Loki finally arrived at the Tower’s secured entrance, clad in dark Midgardian clothing and carrying a bag of Thai takeaway that Stark had him collect under his arm.

“Midtown Thai? Great. Come upstairs, left your tip,” Stark said as he casually gestured to the open elevator.

Loki followed the mortal inside, and ditched the ball cap as soon as the doors closed behind them.

“Any trouble?” Stark asked. Loki held out the takeaway. “Ah. I don’t—can you—just put it on the table when we get upstairs?”

Loki scowled at the inventor. “I’m not _actually_ a deliveryman, Stark. And this Midgardian garb is ridiculous. Do mortals actually wear these—these baseball caps? And _jeans_?”

The doors opened and Stark led the god out. To his credit, the mortal didn’t even flinch as Loki’s magic rolled over his form, revealing the god’s leathers and armor.

“You’re seriously telling me that the whole dominatrix look is more comfortable, Rock of Ages?”

“What?” Loki tossed the take-out bag onto the table.

“Never mind,” Stark reached for the sack, pulling various containers out onto the coffee table. “Dig in. You’ll like this one, called Pad Thai. Good starter Thai food for aliens.”

Loki grimaced as he accepted the paper container, its edges moistened and drooping. He looked inside to see a white noodle-looking concoction with bits of green and yellow, covered in a sauce that smelled faintly of the sea.

“Charming,” Loki muttered.

“Oh don’t be like that, Lokes. I know there was at least one thread when you liked it. Quite a bit, if I recall,” Stark wagged his eyebrows at the god, a salacious grin spreading across his face. “One of the more, uh, more _happy-ending-y_ of the threads, if I recall.”

Loki ignored him to pick at the substance with his plastic fork. He took a bite of the noodles and jerked in surprise at the pleasant flavor across his tongue. It was lighter than he had imagined—than he remembered—rich and warm and tasting of comfort, strangely tasting of home. He took another bite, and another.

Stark’s chuckled. “Told you,” he grinned, taking a bite from another carton.

“Do you remember _all_ of the threads?” Loki grumbled, twisting the fork around the noodles.

“I took notes. First thing when I woke up every morning. So, yes.” Stark polished off one container and reached for a second. “I’m starving. Jarv, when did I last eat?”

“It was at least twenty four hours, Sir, if one does not count coffee as a consumable.”

“Smartass,” Tony sputtered between open-mouthed bites, and Loki grimaced at the disgusting display.

“It takes one to know one, Sir,” the AI intoned.

“So, it’s done, then?” Stark gestured moments later towards Loki with his fork. “No more spear of magical power, just a resident God of Mischief in the tower?”

“Odin has been freed. He will not stand in the way of the treaties with Vanaheimr or Álfheimr; I’ve made sure of that much. I’ve already sent messengers to the each, asking them to send a liaison to Midgard for when Thanos grows nearer,” Loki looked across the room at the strange mortal, casually stretched out on the couch and shoveling food into his mouth. “And I am here. As of this moment I’m in exile. I no longer have a home, Stark.”

“Cheer up, Buttercup.”

Loki gritted his teeth at the unfortunate nickname the genius had apparently picked up from one of the many strands, but said nothing.

Stark put his food down, and wiped his face on a carefully placed napkin, before gesturing to the New York Skyline. “Earth is pretty awesome. Look at that view! And we have a billion more cuisines to try, too.”

“And yet I’m still trying to remember why I actually cared to save this realm,” Loki deadpanned.

Stark stood in a quick, fluid movement, and paced to stand in front of Loki. A hand came to rest on Loki’s shoulder.

The god suppressed a flinch, willing himself to remain still.

“You know you don’t have to do this, Lo-Lo," Stark said. "I’ve seen you in hundreds of threads. Two hundred and seventy two, that I have notes on. I know you. I _know_ you, you asshole.”

Loki sighed; he leaned forward to rest his head against Stark’s hip, letting himself relax. It was too much; he barely knew this mortal, and what he did know of this strange human was made up of bits of observation collected across hundreds of threads that didn’t exist, that had never existed. That never would. But it felt so right, and the thought made Loki’s stomach flip. His heart ached, beating furiously against his ribcage, a _rat-tat-tat_ pattern that he couldn’t understand, couldn’t restrain.

And _Frigga knew_ —He inhaled sharply, blinking back frustrated tears.

Strong fingers carded through his hair, scratching at his scalp and Loki exhaled, leaning into the touch. It had been so long so long since anyone had touched him, until Tony had pulled him back from the edge of eternity, and he gasped as the warm hands shifted to rub his shoulders, teasing the knots with talented fingers.

“I’m so tired, Tony,” he murmured, letting his exhaustion bleed through.

“C’mon Princess, time to rest,” Stark said, and Loki shuffled on weary legs after the genius, barely noticing as Stark pulled him from the leathers and wrestled the god under the covers of his bed.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“When someone blushes, doesn’t that mean ‘yes’?”_

“Mmmm. Y’thinking too loud f’this early,” Stark slurred, and Loki rolled his eyes.

Somehow the mortal had once again found his way into Loki’s bed, his arms and legs tangled with Loki’s as though he thought he could bodily ward away the nightmares that plagued them both.

The first few days that followed Loki’s arrival were so painfully domestic that the god had been certain he was dreaming, living again in one of the many threads that Frigga had cursed him to see. Instead, after a particularly vivid nightmare, one that Stark had barely managed to drag him into wakefulness—and only after Loki had flailed so violently that he had knocked the mortal into a wall—he’d woken the next morning to the odd sensation of warm arms wrapped around him and the painful outline of the metal device in Stark’s chest pressed firmly into his still too-skinny ribcage.

There were worse ways to wake on Midgard, Loki supposed.

Stark didn’t seem to care that Loki was a monster who did whatever he had to do to survive. He wasn’t altruistic, this he knew. If Midgard burned, so be it, the Fates had spoken. But Stark, he would protect. And if Stark refused to leave Midgard, and planned to fly around in that metal contraption when Thanos arrived, then Loki would be there, too.

Not to say he hadn’t tried.

He had begged Stark to leave, to go to Álfheimr, to Vanaheimr, to any of the other various realms, even to Knowhere (which was the closest he’d seen Stark to agreeing, and Loki tucked away the knowledge that there were few things the mortal likely wouldn’t do for the opportunity to travel to a mysterious space station made from the decapitated head of a lost race).

Then there were warm lips on his, and Stark’s tongue darted out against Loki’s lower lip, and the god’s eyes flew open as he jerked away.

“Sorry. Sorry.” Stark raised his hands in surrender, a flush rising in his cheeks, and Loki realized he’d shoved Stark away in his surprise. “Brain not awake before coffee. I, uh, have a photographic memory?" Stark explained—justified. "So the threads are, uh... Sometimes when I wake up it’s hard to remember—uh, this is why I took notes? This isn’t another alternate universe thingy, right? You are really here?”

Loki’s fingers went to his lips; he could still feel the imprint of Stark’s meshed against them as the mortal’s tongue fought for entry.  “I _am_ real,” he murmured after a moment’s hesitation.

“Uh. Sorry. Again,” Stark grunted and moved away. “I thought—I mean, there was that whole masturbation thread—weird? It’s weird. I need coffee.”

Loki grabbed the mortal’s arm with a shaking hand. “Wait,” he whispered.

Stark settled down beside the god, expectant, letting Loki trace patterns against his forearm.

“Masturbation thread?” Loki finally asked. The god’s cheeks were tinged pink.

Stark barked a laugh. “You don’t remember? You were still in jail on Asgard, had all these thoughts about how I really was your type, and then had a little fun with the one-eyed snake? Ring any bells?" He shook his head, smiling sheepishly. "Weirdest hot sex dream I’ve ever had. Can’t tell you how crazy that made me. So I guess I sort of figured the attraction was mutual. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again. Billionaire’s honor.”

Loki’s mouth dropped in shock as he turned to study Stark, but the genius seemed genuinely remorseful, as though he’d apologize a thousand times if Loki demanded it. But if Stark knew about—

 _Oh_.

“That wasn’t _real_? That was one of the _threads_?” Loki cursed, his hands pulling at his too-long hair. “Oh, Norns. Oh, _Norns_.”

Stark laughed, and the sound was joyous and free, and Loki realized it didn’t matter.

Stark already knew everything, all the secrets Loki had so foolishly hidden away. Still wanted him here, on Midgard. Still had offered him a home, a way to fight against Thanos. A future. Wanted _him_.

Let no one say Loki ignored what little good fortune the Fates provide.

He pulled the smaller man close and kissed him again, taking time to lick and taste the mortal’s lips as he guided Stark back down into the piles of blankets, warm and inviting and strangely _home_. And Stark returned the kiss, this time with teeth and tongue and spirit, and as his tongue fought Loki’s in quick, electric darts, something clicked in the back of Loki’s periphery awareness, a strand snapped in place.

It was enough, Loki thought later, afterwards, when Stark lay sprawled across Loki’s chest, warm and sated. He belonged here, for this moment, and whatever may come in the future, it was enough.

* * *

It was fortunate, Loki supposed, that Stark hadn’t retreated to his workshop or been elsewhere in the city when the sky flashed from pale blue to clouded white as thunder shot across the horizon.

“Uh, oh,” Tony muttered, before slipping on the bracelets that Loki had come to associate with the genius’s metal armor. “You know what to do, J.”

“Understood, Sir,” the ever present AI had responded.

Loki moved to stand closer to Stark’s side when the flash of red he’d spotted in the distance dropped to Stark’s landing platform in a blur of gold and red.

“Point Break!” Tony shouted and strolled forward to open the glass door.

Loki pressed his hands flat against the cool granite surface of the bar, before helping himself to a glass of Tony’s finest scotch.

“Man of Iron! I have heard the strangest rumor from Heimdall—”

When Thor’s eyes locked with his, Loki felt for sure he’d collapse, that the shock in his brother’s blue eyes as his sight landed on Loki’s tall form behind the bar would be enough to end the younger god.

He heard Thor’s shout, and then Thor had his hammer aimed at Loki, and the lone repulsor Tony had worn on his left hand whined as he positioned himself between the brothers.

“Drop it, Hammer Time! Thor, you have some catching up to do,” Stark shouted.

“You are harboring a criminal of Asgard, Man of Iron!” Thor boomed. “That I _thought_ dead. _Again_!”

“No, I’m harboring an _exile_ of Asgard. Who now has asylum on Earth and is working with me to save it from a bad purple dinosaur named Thanos? Heard of him?”

“Thanos!” Thor barked, “Is this a trick? What would the Mad Titan want with Midgard?”

“Funny you should ask _now_ ,” Loki drawled. “I could have told you that a few years ago, when the Mad Titan used me to attack this realm.”

Loki would have laughed at the perplexed look that came over the Thunderer’s face, if it hadn’t been so painful to realize that, even after all this time, even after Loki almost died to save him on Svartálfaheimr, Thor still couldn’t see him, still couldn’t see _Loki_.

“Ridiculous,” Thor’s protest was feeble; hesitant. “The Mad Titan does not make deals. He doesn’t—”

Loki did laugh, then, bitter and pained, and he took a long drag of the scotch. The burn soothed his rage.

“Yeah, about that,” Tony shrugged. “Loki’s telling the truth, Thor. And I have proof from someone you might trust more than me or him right now.”

“Proof?” Loki frowned. He drummed a long finger against the tumbler, liquid splashing against the rim. “What proof could you possibly have, Stark?”

“Not helpful, Lokes,” Tony shot an apologetic glance in Loki’s direction that set the god’s spine on fire. He shrugged apologetically but his grin said otherwise. “But if you must know, God of Lies, I wasn’t _entirely_ honest with you, myself. I had another Asgardian visitor last year come by to explain a few things and drop off something. It, ah, wasn’t just the year of thread-surfing for me.”

“Thread surfing?” Thor boomed, and Loki flinched as he recalled that Thor was still there. “Stark, you cannot actually be _working_ with him? Loki is a trickster and a liar.”

“Maybe,” Stark grinned, and Loki felt his stomach clench at Tony’s casual smirk, that the mortal accepted whatever ill traits the god possessed just as easily as he appreciated Loki’s dark hair or green eyes. “But not about this. I saw a sign, shall we say? Was given a vision by the gods?”

Loki groaned again.

Stark flashed the god a small smile. “No? Overkill? Then let’s just say then that the universe has shown me what might have been. And oh, yeah, Frigga dropped off her diary with a note for you, Point Break.”

“What?” the brothers chimed in unison, and Loki glared at Thor.

Tony pulled a small white book from a drawer and tossed it in Thor’s direction. The Thunderer caught it with ease, a look of apprehension flitting briefly across his face as the god recognized the cover.

“Frigga said I’d know when to hand it over.” Tony shrugged casually, crossing his arms. “Said to let you read that entry with the little red ribbon sticking out when it would, and I quote, protect what I cared for most.” Tony snorted. “Not that I knew what the hell she was talking about back then. Oh, and Jarvis couldn’t translate the language, alright, so neither of you try to hurt me for reading mommy’s private diary. Deal?”

“Stark,” Loki hissed, and his shoulders shook with anger at the smug mortal, “you said you didn’t know about the threads, accused _me_ of doing something to cause them—“

“Of course I did,” Tony huffed, a satisfied smirk plastered across his face at having tricked the trickster. “Couldn’t show my entire hand when you were still dressed like the All-Daddy, could I?”

“What does he mean, Loki?” Thor growled. “What does ‘dressed like the All-Daddy’ mean?”

“Nothing,” Tony said with a dismissive wave. “Forget I said that. Read the book first, Point Break. Then talk.”

Thor scowled as he fingered the white cover, before he flipped to the page marked and his eyes widened. While Tony turned to collect his drink, Loki’s heart raced in a rapid torrent as Thor flipped through the pages, the Aesir’s blue eyes darting quickly across the text.

Coming to the end of a page, the God of Thunder moaned like a kicked puppy before his knees gave way, and he sunk into a chair.

The sky flashed outside.

Loki suppressed a flinch, gripping the empty tumbler.

“I thought my brother dead." Thor began in a whisper, his voice gaining strength as he continued. "That he’d fallen into nothing and believed we hated him, for something he could not control, only to find him crazed on Midgard _after_ —and Odin _knew_?” he shouted, in time with the lightning flashing. “Odin _knew_ he had been in the Mad Titan’s thrall!” Thor bristled with rage, and Loki started as Mjölnir hummed, vibrating against the tile floor. “And instead of protecting him, _helping_ him, he sentenced Loki to the dungeons for crimes he hadn’t _willingly_ committed?”

“Of course,” Stark said. “What better way for All-Daddy to keep him around, in case he had _use_ of him again? Yeash. Get your brother a drink, Lo-Lo, I think he’s going to faint.”

Loki bristled. “He’s not my—”

“Shut up, you idiot.” Tony moved to sit across from Thor. “Can’t you see he’s upset enough?”

Loki’s jaw snapped closed. Thor’s large hands gently cradled the white book, but his face was crimson with anger and grief at Frigga’s words.

The trickster god poured two fingers of scotch in a tumbler and slid it across the table to Thor. He seated himself beside Stark as they waited for Thor to compose himself.

“Was it really that terrible?” Thor finally whispered. “Jötunn or not, even when we believed you overwrought in your desire to rule Midgard, I still loved you, brother. Still grieved for you.”

Loki looked towards the windows.

The skies had calmed but the gray clouds remained, bathing the city in cool lines and shades, and every so often the air rumbled with energy; the temper of the Thunderer had been banked only temporarily, held in a precipitous restraint.

“You once swore you’d hunt them down,” Loki grimaced at how tired his voice sounded. “You swore you would hunt them all down and slaughter them all.”

“Who?”

“The Frost Giants, you idiot.”

“What? I was but a boy then!” Thor protested.

“And then after the failed coronation?” Loki hissed, “What were you then? You wanted to teach them their place, teach the Jötnar a _lesson_! What was I to believe?" he demanded, his voice thinning almost to a breaking point. "You’d have started a war because Laufey insulted your pride!”

Thor’s shoulders sagged.

Loki’s jaw clenched, his hands curling into tight fist to hide how they shook.

Stark shoved his leg over and leaned towards the god, pressing their thighs together in silent reassurance.

“I was a fool.” Thor whispered. He tucked away the white book in his cloak, much to Loki's displeasure. “And I was not ready to lead. I have long understood why you stopped my coronation. But now that I know how much _he_ has ignored, let so many evils exist—he would sacrifice so much, for the sake of the few—“

“He means to burn Midgard,” Loki interrupted. “He will let Thanos destroy the realm, to seal him off from the other eight.“

“He wouldn’t!” Thor boomed, suddenly on his feet.

Loki would have flinched at the quick movements had Stark’s hand not reached for his knee that very moment. “Aye, he would,” he said. “He told me so himself. And there’s no one who can stop him, Thor. Frigga is no longer here to hide his weaknesses in mind and spirit, and I,” Loki chuckled. It was a bitter sound, ripped from his throat. “ _I_ was never a prince of Asgard to begin with. And you, dear _brother_ , you’ve refused to rule and exiled yourself on Midgard.”

“Not anymore!” Thor roared.

With an almighty tremble as lightning struck the tower, Mjölnir leapt to Thor’s hand.

The god departed into the storm and Loki’s tumbler of scotch slipped from his fingers, fragmenting in a thousand shards across the tile floor.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems... But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh!"_

Thor returned without fanfare many months later.

He landed on the penthouse balcony, hammer in hand, red cape flapping in the wind as he knocked carefully on the glass door..  It was so absurdly unlike him that Loki’s stomach clenched in apprehension.

“Jarvis,” Loki grimaced, as he moved in short, quick movements to fold the corner page of his book and stand. “Has Stark returned yet?”

“He is not presently at the tower, but I’ve informed him of Mr. Odinson’s return. He will arrive shortly—” The voice paused, as though Stark’s construct was listening to another conversation, and Loki was struck again by how human the sky servant seemed at times. “Sir asked that I remind you of the safety protocols he implemented, and that the Mark 48 is standing by.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” The god exhaled in frustration, letting his seider pool in his hand as he watched the thunderer waiting patiently outside the glass door. “You may as well let him in.”

The electronic lock clicked open and slid to the side, and Thor turned to greet him. “Brother,” he called out, and Loki flinched.

“Don’t call me that,” Loki sniffed, straightening his shoulders. “If you are looking for Stark—”

“I have not come to speak with Friend Stark.” Thor interrupted.

“ _Oh_.” Loki edged towards the stairs on the opposite side of the room.

If Thor hadn’t come to see Stark, there was no purpose, no reason that the other god would be here but for—

Loki caught himself, hand on the stair railing as he stepped towards the door, long fingers encircled the railing. The steel was cool beneath his grasp. “I won’t go back, Thor. _I won’t_.”

“Loki,” Thor interrupted again. The Thunderer ran a tired hand over his eyes, and Loki noticed for the first time that Thor looked worn, weary. His face had lines Loki didn’t remember seeing before, around his eyes. “That is not why I am here, brother. I _do_ need to speak with Stark—Thanos is moving, and I’ll need you to speak with the Vanir, since they’ve refused to honor the treaty without your presence. But that’s not the only reason I’ve come.”

“What?” Loki’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He studied Thor’s face but there was no hint of deception in the Thunderer’s gaze. "Why would they not share intelligence with Asgard? You are still a prince of Asgard, are you not, or—”

“King.” Thor interrupted, a sheepish grin on the oaf’s face as he shrugged. “I mean, _I_ am the king now.”

Loki turned an icy glare in Thor’s direction. “Well, explain then,” he mocked, pacing along the edge of the room.

“The All-Father was not the same. His grief and anger after Mother’s death—it changed him. When I returned to Asgard—things had deteriorated while you were away, Loki. The Council of the Nine, presented with the evidence from Mother’s diary, revoked their confidence. And Father, he—” Thor shifted from foot to foot, swinging Mjölnir around as though he were fiddling with a quill between his fingers during a schoolboy’s exam.

Loki had the urge to demand he spit it out, whatever it was that had tongue-tied the Thunderer.

“—well, he tried to _kill_ the Council members, but Gungnir rebelled.”

Loki made his way to the couch and sat, his knees giving way as he sat, exhausted.  The Council—he had never heard of a king trying to—never in the history of Asgard had the council voted down their confidence of the All-Father, never had—

“And, ah, I’m not sure you realize—” Thor grinned, a secret joke playing across his expression, “—but certain of our allies are better at detecting seidr-fed illusions than others. The Vanir actually refused to meet with the All-Father, after you relinquished the throne.”

“Norns.” Loki let his face fall into his hands, shoulders shaking with the realization that the Vanir made their treaty—offered him a _wife_!—knowing that it was not Odin on the throne. “But how could—Norns!”

Thor’s amused chuckle rumbled around the room.

Loki grimaced at how light and free the sound made him feel, like were but three hundred years old again and Thor could still do no wrong in Loki’s eyes. “So you are the king now,” he said instead. “Come to gloat then, brother?”

“Loki,” Thor sighed heavily and took the couch across from the younger god. “Please, look at me.”

Loki’s knee twitched. He shifted to meet Thor’s eyes. It was all he could do to not see Frigga’s features and expressions in Thor’s face.

“I know I’ve wronged you,” Thor said.

Loki bit his tongue to hold back a sharp retort.

“I know that I cannot make that right," the Thunderer continued. "But I hope that someday we can be family again. You’re the only family I have left, brother. I will not fail you again.”

Loki looked away.  “I don’t know what you expect me to say, Thor.” He hesitated, unable to meet Thor’s eyes. “You believed me capable of evil. Yes, I am capable, Thanos knew that very well indeed. But you believed it to be _me_. That is—” Loki sighed, drumming his fingers across his knee, “—it’s hard for me to accept—to forgive—right now.”

“I understand,” Thor pulled a satchel from over his shoulder, a leather carry-all that Loki had assumed was Thor’s. “I brought some of your things from Asgard, if you want them.” He stood in a swift, restless motion.

Loki leaned away reflexively.

Thor’s face fell, a sad wistful look in his eyes. “Loki,  you _are_ still a Prince of Asgard. You are free to return and go as you wish, and your chambers have not been disturbed. Mother kept them cleaned while—” Thor coughed, “—while you were away. She never lost hope.”

Loki let his eyes close, overwhelmed with grief.

He had visited his rooms, once, while in Odin’s form; late at night so that none would wonder why the King of Asgard had snuck into the traitor’s rooms. It was unsettling; he hadn’t expected to see his chambers so undisturbed. When Loki had knelt down by the bed, the scent from his pillow wafted of the distinct floral bouquet of his mother’s perfume.

(He hadn't returned after that.)

“I am quite satisfied with my accommodations on Midgard presently,” Loki managed after a moment. His voice was hoarse and unsteady, even to his own ears. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Jarvis will arrange a meeting for you with Stark—”

“I also brought her diary.”

Loki flinched in surprise, “Pardon?”

“Mother’s diary,” Thor shrugged, almost sheepishly rubbing his neck. “She asked me to give it to you, after I had finished with it. I admit, I kept it longer than I needed to, but her seidr still somehow preserves the pages. There’s a green marker, too; I’m certain it’s for you.” He set the gold-embellished book on the table.

Loki swallowed hard. He wished the book would burst into flame, for surely if he glared ferociously enough at it, any moment now the book would combust like one of Tony’s experiments.

“She loved you very much, Loki," Thor whispered. "As do I. _Please_ , please don’t shut me out forever.” He hesitantly looked toward the ceiling. “Jarvis? If you would, ah, provide the time for a meeting with Stark, to the mobile device of Jane Foster? I will remain on Midgard for a few days yet.”

“I shall contact Ms. Foster with Mr. Stark’s availability, Mr. Odinson.”

“Thank you,” Thor nodded once more to Loki, taking his leave.

* * *

Loki waited almost a month to open the diary.

At first, he waited until Thor had returned to Asgard, so that the Thunderer couldn’t take the book away (which was silly, he realized, since Thor had brought it to him in the first place).

Then, he waited because he didn’t have time.

After Thor departed, Stark had called the Avengers together and laid out everything that he and Loki had worked towards in the last few months. Though Loki had known what the mortal intended to do, it had been disconcerting to have his life and secrets exposed for the taking. The pitying looks from the soldier were the worst, and Loki remembered biting his tongue, Tony’s hand a claw-like grip on his elbow, as the two ex-SHIELD assassins peppering him with questions about his captivity.

But Thanos was on the move.

It wouldn’t be long, mere months at most, before the Mad Titan’s new fleet arrived, and the Vanir and Light Elves delegations were already making preparations for their sojourn to Midgard.

When the King of Asgard returned a few weeks later, he had stunned Loki, utterly and truly, by asking him to act as Asgard’s ambassador to Midgard and lead Asgard’s combined allies into battle when the Mad Titan arrived.

Barton had laughed so hard that Rogers clapped him on the back, concerned that the archer was having a seizure.

“But—it’s perfect—I mean—He—He—led—and now—” Barton had wheezed.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, birdbrain. It’s not that funny,” Stark snapped.

“It’s—kinda—”

“Shit, Nat, get the man some water.” Stark growled, unamused. “And a valium. In fact, forget the water. Just sedate him.”

“Loki?” Thor prodded, “It is customary to say something, is it not?”

Loki’s mouth dropped open, once, then he tried again, until finally, he managed to croak, “Why?”

Thor just laughed. Clapped Rogers on the back and said he had to visit Jane before returning to Asgard.

The days that followed were spent readying Midgard for thousands upon thousands of alien warships to land in camouflaged bases around the world, hidden and ready for Thanos. And then, surreally enough, Thor showed up with the Tesseract and an Aesir device, to help open a portal large enough for the Vanir fleet, with Loki’s help.

Loki didn’t miss how the Widow’s eyes (and knives) tracked the god’s movements the next day, how she watched his eyes for any hints of unnatural blue. Loki would have laughed— _Wrong gem!_ , he would have teased—but the last thing he wanted was for anyone to know the power of the scepter he’d left behind so long ago.

Then, it was quiet.

Tony went to a meeting in the city, leaving Loki alone again in the penthouse to stare at the harmless-looking white book with bits of green and red ribbon peeping from the pages.

For the first time since her death, since he’d destroyed the furnishings she’d smuggled into his cage, Loki remembered her gentleness. Her touch. The way she looked at Loki as though he’d disappointed her, but with so much love that it was easy for him to laugh it off, to grin and nod and apologize; knowing it never would change things; never would change her affections.

Loki opened the diary.

* * *

Tony found him later that night, curled on the couch around the gold-plated book.

The man, hand-picked by the Fates and Frigga’s plucking at the strings of the tapestry, took Loki’s face in his hands and wiped away the tears, before tugging the god off the couch and pulling him along.

The last place Loki had expected to end up was on the roof, under the very stars that he’d fallen through, sitting on an expansive chair that Stark had called a beanbag. Stark had one of his bots cart up several blankets, pizza, and a thermos of something he’d called hot cocoa (“Made by the good Captain Rogers himself, not to be confused with Captain Morgan,” Tony said), and the by-now-obligatory bottle of Ogden’s finest.

Despite the chilly autumn air, it was almost warm under blankets beside Stark, as the strange chair forced Loki to both lean back into Tony and look at the stars at the same time. The sky was vast and gray against the lights of New York.

Loki felt the first wet trail across his cheek almost as one witnessed blood welling forth from a wound in battle, moments before one's senses caught up enough to register the pain.

“Talk to me, Lokes,” Stark ordered. An arm came round the god’s shoulders.

Loki sighed. “Can’t I just enjoy the view?”

“Uh, no. You’ve not looked this broken since that thread where you stopped showering.” Stark  pulled a face and shuddered. “Thank God we’re passed the point in this, ah, whatever it is. I still remember how terrible you smelled.”

“You can hardly remember a smell from a _dream_ , Stark.”

“Maybe you can’t, Lo-Kitty,” Stark stuffed another bite of pizza into his mouth, “but I have a photographic memory, remember?”

“Which explains why you took detailed notes of every thread, yes?” Loki huffed and took a slice of pizza for himself.

“Stop stalling, Buttercup.” Tony chuckled.

Loki chewed on his pizza. Stark’s favorite was what he called ‘The Everything,’ with everything that Midgardians could possibly put on top of their pizza. Loki thought it was Stark’s favorite simply because the genius couldn’t be bothered to actually select the toppings he preferred. The pizza was no longer warm, but the flavor was rich and delightful across Loki’s tongue.

He finished two more slices before he finally sagged into Stark’s smaller form, letting his head fall back against Tony’s elbow.

“She knew,” Loki whispered in Tony’s ear. “She knew everything. That Odin wouldn’t listen. That she would die if—that—” Loki bit back a sob, “that I’d been tortured by Thanos, forced—” and Stark sucked in a breath beside him, “—and she picked this thread, wove _this_ path into the tapestry, because—because in the threads where I was released from the dungeons, where we never met, when I stayed on Asgard, I wasn’t as—I never recovered, if she lived.”

Stark made a strangled noise and the fingers against Loki’s shoulder tightened, pulling the god closer.

“She let herself—she wasted her _life_ for—” and this time the tears did run again, hot and heavy down Loki’s cheeks and dripping onto Stark’s tunic, and he felt the mortal’s warm breath on his cheek followed by the gentle press of lips to his forehead.

Stark gave a pained laugh against Loki’s scalp as he carded his fingers through the silky black strands. He cupped Loki’s cheek gently, the god leaned into the touch. “Crazy, aren’t they?” Stark whispered reverently. “Those assholes who saved us from ourselves?”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said. “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.” ___

To Loki, it seemed as though the last few months passed in a whirlwind with so many changes that he sometimes woke thinking it had all been another flight of fancy of the Fates, while he rotted alone in his cell. But then he would turn and see Tony’s face, nestled into a pillow beside him and highlighted blue by the reactor.

When the other Avengers—called together by Stark’s very real information about the threat of Thanos—had decided to move into the tower, Tony said Loki was under his protection. No one was to touch his stuff, or they’d find themselves out of the tower and out of Tony’s fancy tech. Not like the Avengers would have argued; Thor had already vouched for Loki when he'd appointed him Asgard’s ambassador to Earth.

But Rogers had rolled his eyes and told Stark to grow up, and the memory of the good Captain’s hair slowly turning bright green as the God of Mischief twitched his fingers still brought a smile to Loki’s face. And somehow that one small act had gotten Barton to laugh so hard that Romanova had sedated him. Again.

Rogers still made cookies, in this thread. Barton was just as much an ass as he had always been, though surprisingly more willing to accept that Loki had been under the thumb of Thanos than Loki expected. The Widow was mostly cautious of him, but taught Loki to play chess. Because she wanted to learn his poker face, she'd said.

Even Bruce and Loki had developed an uneasy, quiet friendship, with the kind man letting Loki in on some of the quirks of living with humanity, and—at times—with Tony.

And Tony...

Loki still remembered the feeling of Tony’s fingers over his skin on that night when the mortal carefully traced and kissed every single scar that The Other had left on Loki’s lean frame. He remembered how his fingers had trembled in nervous circles on the sheets as Tony ran his lips and fingers and tongue along each line, then wiped away Loki’s tears, before he traced the lines again. Again and again, until Loki had no tears left, and Stark remained, still whispering quiet platitudes in Loki’s ear.

And later, as Tony had rocked slowly into him, Loki’s arms tightly around the mortal’s shoulders as the god moaned his pleasure into Tony’s ear, He'd decorated the mortal’s delicate skin with small bites and bruises; marking him, as Tony marked him in return, as the genius rocked back and forth, his talented fingers sliding across Loki’s sensitive flesh, undoing the god from the inside out and remaking him, whole and new and scarred.

But Tony had scars too, that fanned outward like a miniature sun from the center of his chest; bright, ice-blue, and cool to the touch. Tony’s scars ached, too, and his dreams were toxic, vile things that woke Loki with the mortal’s pitiful screams and flailing elbows.

Loki had almost forgotten what hope had felt like, how much it burned in his very core to have something to hold on to, in this insane, beautiful man that was broken in so many ways like him.

The morning Thanos arrived was like any other morning.

Loki woke in Tony’s bed with the mortal’s limbs and arms wrapped around him, Tony’s nose tucked firmly against Loki’s chin. He was warm, too warm under Tony and the blankets, and he did not care.

It was early still, but Loki was awake.

And he knew, then; but he’d always known. He’d known since the day Thanos handed him the scepter, since the moment The Other had announced him ready to serve, that this day would come.

The perimeter alarms triggered, a warning on the edges of the solar system’s outer limits that something big was approaching from beyond, and Stark stood, cursing and rubbing sleep from his eyes as he gathered up his things and ordered Jarvis to make coffee.

Loki trailed after the mortal until Stark turned abruptly, in the middle of his conversation with the Captain, and shoved the god against the wall, kissing him so thoroughly that Loki thought he saw stars.

Rogers disengaged the connection with a pointed huff.

Tony laughed, before kissing him again.  “Chin up, Lo-Kitty, we got a Titanic to sink!” he proclaimed with an almost manic glee in his amber eyes.

“You are incorrigible,” Loki said.

After that, nothing else mattered but defeating the Mad Titan once and for all.

Half an hour later, a messenger arrived from Asgard. Thor would join them shortly with the Warriors Three and Sif, but he had sent one of his most trusted messengers ahead with a golden box.

For Tony.

And the genius ate the apple inside, before Loki could protest. Before Loki could explain what it meant or worry that Tony may be adversely affected. Before Loki could worry himself that the mortal wouldn’t want to eat it, shouldn’t eat it, shouldn’t want to stay with the god forever.

As the pair suited up with the other Avengers on the quinjet, Loki fastening the buckles of his magically enhanced green armor with Stark’s modifications while Tony stepped into the red armor segments, warnings lit up the screens behind them. More and more ships from Thanos’ fleet had crossed the outer perimeter, but Loki couldn’t help but believe. Couldn’t help but hope.

Because somehow, if Frigga had picked this tapestry to weave, with this strange mortal and even stranger world that he now called home, Loki knew Thanos didn’t stand a chance.

Then the moment was upon them, the massive warships hovering on the edges of the Earth’s atmosphere, as the monolithic machines began their slow descent at the same time the Vanir warships engaged.

Widow guided their quinjet just close enough to get Loki and Tony near the lead ship, her weapons blazing as Hawkeye manned the controls, and in the distance lightning flashed.

The hangar bay opened, and Stark grinned at the god before his faceplate clicked into place. “Let’s light ‘em up, kids!” he shouted.

Loki followed him into the fray.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 Frostiron Bang. This plot-bunny was supposed to be just over 5K and a one-shot. Oops. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Nothing but love for my artist [Tamflakes](http://tamflakes.tumblr.com). I got to watch her art for an entire 6 hours one day while rocking out to her music selections. Totally a privilege. Thanks also for being the first to read this and tell me it didn't suck. Not to mention, oh my god, did you see her art?!? *dead*
> 
> Thanks to those who read this and corrected my terrible grammar/typos/minutia/taught me the correct spelling of "lightning"/etc.: [Tonysstarkss](http://tonysstarkss.tumblr.com) and [Plumadesatada](http://plumadesatada.tumblr.com). Also, if you find any remaining typos or grammatical inconsistencies (I'm looking at you **Temul** ), blame them. The author is totally innocent.
> 
> Eternal gratitude to [Plumadesatada](http://plumadesatada.tumblr.com) for thinking I might know rules of grammar and/or commas just because English is my native tongue. I'm forever grateful for your sarcastic arguments with Frigga, and wish I'd saved those somewhere, instead of deleting them yesterday in a fit of accidental maturity. Seriously, thanks. This would not be as purdy without your help.
> 
> More thanks to those who held my proverbial hand when I freaked out about this monstrosity for telling me that it _probably_ didn't suck even though they hadn't read it yet, especially the Doxies (who continue to inspire me in ways I never imagined possible), [UsedUpShiver](http://usedupshiver.tumblr.com) and [Horns-of-Mischief](http://horns-of-mischief.tumblr.com) (who both bore the brunt of my freaking out in August and September until The Paradox occurred), and everyone who didn't unfollow me last August when I posted an excessive number of coffee-fueled all-caps posts as the word count passed 15K and just kept on stubbornly rising. 
> 
> Quotes at the beginning of the various chapters are from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's _The Little Prince_. If you've not read it and you're interested in bawling your eyes out over a children's book, I highly recommend it. As de Saint-Exupéry so eloquently put it, _"it is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."_
> 
> This is my rose. Thanks for reading.


End file.
